Evaluation of operating and mixing conditions of a polymer dispersion co-vinyl acetate and ester acrylic to obtain recovered leather

This paper presents the development of an experimental design that evaluated the operating conditions of the process to obtain binded recovered leather sheets. Preliminary tests were performed to obtain the material, and to select the process variables that affected the most the bonded leather sheet final properties. Then, an experimental design type 2k was run, where k = 4 variables corresponding to the percentage by weight of water mass ratio of binder leather, pressure, and curing temperature. The obtained material was characterized by tensile test, percentage compressibility, tear strength, and water absorption percentage. The result showed that the main factors that optimize the response variables in the levels studied were: the curing temperature in the low value and the amount of binder in the high level, whereas for the water absorption rate was also significant amount of water added during the process. The properties of the material obtained were compared to commercial shoe insoles and the results were superior on: tear resistance, compressibility and percentage rate of water absorption. Finally, it was concluded that through the implementation of the recycling process suggested, recovered leather sheets properties would allow industrial application