Wool Keratin Extraction And Its Application

Our country has abundant wool resources and is flourish in woolen textile industry. But a large quantity of wool fibers is wasted every year. With a rich content and relatively higher purity, wool keratin is a resource of high practical value. The way to realize the value is by depolymerizing the abandoned wool, extracting keratin and recycling.A lot of the literatures have report the extraction of keratin, but the molecular weight distribution, molecular weight size, rate of keratin extraction are hard to control, and these numerical values are very important for the application of keratin. So the way to extract the keratin is still in the study, and the keratin extraction method is a hot topic in the research area of current keratin field.First, referring to the reduction-C method(the method to add SDS in the reducing agent), the subject has compared the dissolve rate by using different reductant Sodium Metabisulphite and Sodium Bisulfite and selected Sodium Bisulfite as the reductant in the process. And then on the basis of the previous work, use the oxidation method first, and reduction method again. Explore a new way to extract keratin that the molecular weight distribution concentrated and molecular weight distribution in more than 50 kDa. Determination of the experimental error of wool dissolution rate is high, so this paper discuss the single factor experiment by doing different factors affect the dissolution rate of wool, and determined the process conditions in the oxidation-reduction two-bath two-step method which can obtain higher dissolve rate. The properties of the keratin were analyzed and characterized by the Tests of SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, IR spectrum, X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis.Secondly, use the keratin solution to wool anti-felting finishing directly. The residual reducing agent component in the solution can also play a shrinkproof effect. Analysis of various factors (keratin solution amount, time, temperature, pH), in the process on wool shrink-proofing properties are done. By measuring the felt shrinkagefinally determined the technological conditions in the anti-shrinkage finishing. After the treatment, the anti-shrinkage properties of wool fabric have been improved. Then the mechanical properties of the treated fabric were tested. The results has showed that wool fabric after anti-shrinkage finishing, breaking strength has almost no damage. What' more, whiteness has a slight rise compared with those before finishing process.Meanwhile, In order to expand the application of keratin. keratin films can be made by the extracted keratin in some kind of way. Hybrid films with better mechanical properties were prepared by adding chitosan into keratin with different proportions. The Hybrid films was characterized and analysed through FITR, XRD,SEM, TGA. It can be seen from contact angle measurement and DMA analysis that the break strength increased and hydrophilicity decreased with an increase of chitosan contents in the hybrid films.