Studies on The Effects of Enzyme in Leather Processing

The use of enzymes in leather processing has a long and colorful history and a brief outline of this fascinating subject may perhaps help to put our present preoccupations into some perspective. Enzyme dependent processes have been employed in leather making for thousands of years. The enzymatic degradation of individual components of skins such as derma tin soleplate proteoglycan or elastin that can occur during bating process to achieve specific production objects, for example, the development of rapid unhairing liming processes or the production of more open or relaxed fiber structure.

The enzymatic formulations used in the beam house are [1] soaking sides for salted and dry raw hides and preserved fur skin [2] unhairing formulations for all types of hides and skins.[3]alkaline bates for scud removal and opening up of fiber structure [4]acid bates for blue chrome and fur skins [5] enzymatic degreasing agents for greasy skins and [6] enzymatic formulations for by production utilization.

Tanning is a process of converting participle outer covering of animals to no participle leathers with definite physical, chemical and biological properties so that they can be used in our daily life and industries. Before going into details, if necessary to discuss a little bit about the composition of hides and skins.

Reasons for using enzyme

1. Improve the quality.
2. Get a better yield.
3. Environment friendly.

Among these, protein is the only most important material for leather making 64 percent to 94 percent of the solid matters of the hides and skins are tot fibrous proteins known as albumin and musing are found in hides and skins. During soaking liming, bating, most of soluble proteins and fibrous proteins like keratin, reticular etc are removed. Then the white collagen fibers are tanned to usable leather.

Most of the enzymes used in the tannery processing are still of the proteolysis type, required to selectively degrade the peptide bonds of the different non collagen us proteins of hides and skins whilst avoiding any damage to the collagen itself.

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