Raw skin preservation through sodium salts — A comparative analysis

Khari salt and NaCl are traditional preservatives for raw hides/skin used for leather processing. With well known efficiencies and low cost of curing these sodium salts are applied widely in India. These curing salts generate a huge amount of pollution and salinity in the form of total dissolved solids (TDS) and chlorides (Cl−) during leather processing. Therefore various investigating groups have been involved in formulating alternative curing systems. With this view, an attempt has been made to evolve a least chloride containing curing system for salinity abatement. In our research work we had introduced an attempt towards salinity treatment in the Kanpur region with another sodium salt i.e. sodium sulphate. In this study we have now compared sodium sulphate salts with NaCl and Khari salts for various paradigms of analysis including moisture content, deterioration rate, bacteriostatic properties and SEM. Results proved that sodium sulphate salts are several folds better than conventional salts cured stock. Since sodium sulphate salts reduce the chloride content from the effluent and also effectively reduce TDS and TSS in the final effluent, they are ideally suited for hide preservation.