Influence of ultrasound on diffusion through skin/leather matrix

Leather is a unique porous material, which is composed of a three-dimensional weave of tanned collagen fibre bundles. Collagen is a fibrous protein well organized in the formation of skin as building block. This paper studies the use of ultrasound in improving the diffusion process through porous skin/leather matrix. A diffusion model for leather processing has been proposed taking into account of pore characteristics in leather. Dye diffusion experiments have been carried out with leather and powdered leather to show the influence of ultrasound under two different diffusion conditions. Apparent diffusion coefficient (D) of dye through leather matrix has been calculated from the experimental dye uptake data. The results indicate that the use of ultrasound could achieve, 16.2 and 8.56 times improvement in D value for leather at 50 °C and 30 °C, respectively as compared to 2.99 and 1.55 times for powdered leather. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis of leather has also been performed which shows that fibre structure and morphology are not affected by the use of ultrasound. This study throws some light on enhanced transport through porous materials of complex nature such as skin/leather using ultrasound.