A novel approach in single stage combined bleaching and protease enzyme treatments on wool fabrics

Abstract

Today’s scenario of textile wool industry has been radically changed to use ecofriendly chemicals and enzymes in preparatory and finishing processes due to pollution in the process of chemical treatments. In this research work, a single stage combined bleaching and biopolishing treatment technique for wool fabric was carried out by using acid and alkaline protease enzymes to analyse degradation of wool fabrics. The wool fabrics used were woven wool fabric which undergoes different treatment techniques like bleaching and acid protease, bleaching and alkaline protease, only bleaching treatment, only acid protease and only alkaline protease. The treated wool fabric samples at various process conditions were tested for their low stress mechanical properties such as tensile, shear, bending, compression, and surface. These test results were analyzed and their significant differences in terms of multivariant ANOVA analysis using Design Expert software 8.0 were reported. This novel technique has the ideal effect on wool textile in terms of better softness, weight loss, bending, shear, compression, and tensile strength. Because of mild reaction conditions of alkaline protease enzyme with hydrogen peroxide combined preparatory technique for wool textile treatment would be a promising and prospective method in bioprocessing of wool fabrics.