Abstract
The subcritical water (SubCW) extractions of waste wool to produce keratin were performed at temperatures of 150 °C to 250 °C and at different reaction times between 5 min to 75 min. The resulting proteins in the obtained products were confirmed with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The molecular weight of the protein extracts was determined by using two different methods: with a polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS-PAGE) and by using a gel permeation chromatography. The results show, that by using SubCW, keratin can be isolated from waste wool in very high yields, much higher than by other chemical methods. Maximal yield was achieved at 180 °C and 60 min and it was 90.3%. The molecular weight distributions of extracted proteins, which were generated from waste wool were between 14 kDa and 4 kDa, what is comparable to the results obtained by other chemical methods.
Highlights
The growing concerns regarding the environmental pollution and the increasing demand for safe and sustainable materials are encouraging the search for green processing methods that would allow exploitation of natural resources and development of bio-based products
The results show, that by using subcritical water (SubCW), keratin can be isolated from waste wool in very high yields, much higher than by other chemical methods
Keratin isolation from waste wool was performed in a high pressure and high temperature batch reactor with SubCW at temperatures of 150 °C–250 °C and at different reaction time from 5 min to 75 min
Summary
The growing concerns regarding the environmental pollution and the increasing demand for safe and sustainable materials are encouraging the search for green processing methods that would allow exploitation of natural resources and development of bio-based products. By-products of the textile and meat industries, such as wool, horns, hooves and feathers contain a large proportion of keratin.[1,2] Keratin is a protein that has, due to its biodegradability and biocompatibility, recently become increasingly important.[3] Wool is often used in textile industry due to its excellent mechanical properties. Wool contains up to 95% of pure keratin, which is an important secondary product.[5] In addition to proteins, wool contains small proportion of lipids, mineral salts, nucleic acid residues and carbohydrates.[2] Keratin has an extremely high potential to be used for the development of new products in the pharmaceutical, medical, cosmetic and biotechnology industries. Keratin from wool can be used for several forms of gels, microfibres, films, sponges, bulk materials, in wound healing, drug delivery, tissue engineering and medical devices.[1,4,6,7]
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