Minus salt goat skin preservation: Extreme chloride reduction in tannery wastewater

Content: Animal skins, a byproduct of the meat industry is the basic raw materials for the tanning industry. Just after flaying, animal skins have to preserve protecting it from microbiological destruction. Globally, sodium chloride is mostly used as popular preserving agents for the animal skins. It preserves the skin by its dehydrating ability. Nevertheless, sodium chloride is cost-effective, available, and easy to apply but the method suffers greatly in terms of environmental context. To reduce the pollution load, especially chloride in soaking operation several works have been carried out to preserve animal skins with various agents. This study is intended to preserve the goat skin with Sphagneticola trilobata leaf paste without sodium chloride for reducing the chloride in the soaking liquor. The plant has antimicrobial activity, widely distributed tropical and subtropical regions. The anticipated preservation method was assessed monitoring different parameters e.g., shrinkage temperature, hair slip, putrefaction, odour, moisture content, extractable nitrogen, and bacterial count on fresh (raw), 1st, 4th, 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th day in comparison to the conventional wet salting method. The physical properties of the processed leathers e.g., tensile strength, percentage of elongation, and ball burst of the crust leathers were fulfilled the required values. The chemical parameters like chloride, total dissolved solids (TDS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) of soaking liquor were investigated. The proposed preservation method was reduced pollution loads: chloride, TDS, BOD, and COD in soaking operation by 98.04%, 92.9%, 90.2% and 85.5%, respectively. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) photographs of both the present and conventional preservation methods processed crust leathers revealed similar texture and quality to each other. The anticipated preservation method could be a sustainable option to preserve goat skin, which could reduce the pollution loads during leather processing. Take-Away: 1. Sphagneticola trilobata leaf paste preserved goat skin up to 28 days 2. Reduction of chloride and TDS were 98.04% and 92.9% in soaking liquor 3. Lessening of BOD and COD were 90.2% and 85.5% in soaking liquo