New wet-white technology presented at 9th AICLST conference

The 9th AICLST is being hosted by the Taiwanese International Leather Association (TILA) and was formally opened by Dr Volkan Candar, President, IULTCS, TILA Honorary Chairman, Jen Yang and Richard Pai, Head of the organising committee of TILA. The technical programme for the event was organised by AICLST Co-ordinator, Professor George Huang of TILA.

The keynote presentation was given by Professor Bi Shi, National Engineering Laboratory for Clean Technology of Leather Manufacture, Sichuan University in Chengdu and focussed on the current trend in the tanning industry towards an alternative wet-white technology to chrome tanning. His paper "A novel wet-white technology based on an amphoteric organic tanning agent", was based on a new amphoteric organic tanning agent (named TWT) containing amino, carboxyl and aldehyde groups synthesised through a Mannich reaction and radical polymerisation.

The resulting white leather gives a shrinkage temperature of 85 celcius and removes or reduces the amount of chromium or sodium chloride used in leathermaking.  Professor Shi has used the new tanning system on 1mm goatskin and on a 2.5 mm bovine substrate.

Following the keynote presentation two AICLST lectures were given by Dr Cheng-Kung Liu, Eastern Regional Research Center, USDA, USA titled; "Evaluation of hides and leather using ultrasonic technology" and Professor Michael Redwood, University of Northampton, UK who gave a presentation on "Corporate Social Responsibility and the Carbon Footprint of Leather". CSR and carbon footprinting in the tanning sector are hot topics in the industry at present a number of presentations on the latter will be given during the AICLST conference.

The conference continues until November 14 and 90 papers will be presented during the three-day event.