Recovery of Lac Resin from the Aqueous Effluent of Shellac Industry

Shellac and aleuritic acid manufacturing industries generate a lot of alkaline aqueous effluent during the process of manufacture of shellac and aleuritic acid from the seedlac/sticklac. The generated effluent contains lac resin, lac wax, lac dye and other water-soluble organic acids. Shellac industries in India face problems with the disposal of aqueous effluent due to the presence of considerable amounts of natural organic molecules and the dark colour solution. To address these problems, we have developed a novel method for the selective recovery of the lac resin from the alkaline aqueous effluent of shellac manufacturing industry. The recovered lac resin has been characterized by 13C-NMR, FT-IR and melting point and the data were compared with standard industrial-grade resin. The recovered lac resin was evaluated by the lac manufacturing industry for commercial applications.