Micro DSC and NMR MOUSE studies of collagen–vegetable tannin interaction mechanism during leather making

In this study NMR MOUSE and micro DSC techniques were used to investigate the interaction between collagen and various vegetable tannins during leather making process with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of different water environment in relation to tannin type. We have previously showed that relaxation times may provide useful information on collagen matrix properties. The vegetable tanned leathers were obtained by patented techniques inspired from ancient recipes at the National R&D Institute for Textile and Leather, ICPI Division, Bucharest using various vegetable extracts such as myrobalan, gambier and chestnut. Longitudinal and transversal relaxation times T1 and T2eff were measured using a PM2 portable NMR-MOUSE with 20.05 MHz frequency. Micro DSC measurements were carried out with a high-sensitivity SETARAM Micro-DSC III in the temperature range (5 to 95) °C at 0.5 K min-1 heating rate. The investigated leathers showed significant differences in the values of spin-spin (T2eff) and spin-lattice (T1) relaxation times depending on tannin type that well corelates with the variation of the calorimetric parameters (denaturation temperature and enthalpy, peak shape). These results highlight the complementarity of the information obtained by the two techniques and open new ways for both designing new leather assortments and analyses of historical and archaeological leather.