Abstract

At present, some commercially available oil tanning agents have poor ability to combine with collagen, after they are used for tanning, massive amounts of oil tanning agent are left in the used tanning bath, which causes the problem of waste of oil tanning agent and environmental pollution. Developing an oil tanning agent which has the ability to combine with collagen, and simplifying the tanning process are the main aims of this dissertation. A new oil tanning agent with lanolin and octadecanol modified by cyanuric chloride is studied. Reaction material ratios were optimised based on the softness of the tanned leather and the eluted amount of oil tanning agent in the tanned leather. The synthesised oil tanning agent was analysed with infrared spectroscopy. The collagen fibre dispersion of the leather tanned with synthesised oil tanning agent was characterised with SEM. Experiments showed that the optimised material ratio was n(lanolin): n (octadecanol): n (cyanuric chloride) =1:1:1. The infrared spectroscopy proves that the experiment successfully added the triazine ring to the lanolin. SEM shows that the collagen fibres of the tanned leather are well dispersed which testifies that this oil tanning agent has the function of dispersing collagen fibres and is a good oil tanning agent.