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An efficient dehairing system supported by oxidative-enzymatic auxiliary towards sustainability

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Abstract

A method of dehairing of goat skins using oxidative chemicals and protease enzymes has been attempted. The dehairing process is one of the important and essential steps in leather making, where hair is removed by lime and sodium sulphide in the conventional process. This conventional dehairing system generates a higher amount of pollution problem as compared to the other unit operations and unit processes. In this work, dehairing of the goat skins through oxidative agents namely magnesium peroxide and protease enzyme has been attempted. For this, protease has been produced from Bacillus sp. at the laboratory level and the activity was found. The dehairing of goat skins takes place for the duration of 14–16 h. The leather produced with the experimental sample showed comparable organoleptic and strength properties with the conventional sample. This method paved the way for the reduction of pollution loads especially BOD, COD, and TDS to the level of 59, 27, and 77%, respectively, in comparison with the control sample. The reaction kinetics for the formation of the ligand-macromolecular complex is found in the isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiment and a mathematical model has been formulated. The dyed crust leather showed comparable colour properties. In addition to that, there is a reduction in processing time for leather making through skipping reliming and deliming processes which are said to be another advantage of this method. The physical strength properties of the experimental leather were also comparable with conventionally produced leather.

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Acknowledgements

All the authors would like to acknowledge and thank CSIR, New Delhi for approving the FBR project with code MLP-2004 for carrying out this work. 

Funding

The authors thank Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India for sponsoring and permitting to carry out this work under Focused Basic Research (FBR) project with code: MLP 2004. 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Leather Processing Technology, CSIR-Central Leather Research Institute, Adyar, Chennai, 20, India

    James Kanagaraj & Ramakrishna Prasanna

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, CSIR-CLRI, Adyar, Chennai, 600020, India

    Rames Chandra Panda

  3. Department of USD, CSIR-CLRI, Adyar, Chennai, 600020, India

    Alagamuthu Tamilselvi

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  1. James Kanagaraj
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  2. Rames Chandra Panda
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  3. Ramakrishna Prasanna
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  4. Alagamuthu Tamilselvi
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Dr. James Kanagaraj, Dr. Rames C. Panda, Ramakrishna Prasanna, and Alagamuthu Tamilselvi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Dr. James Kanagaraj and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Dr. Alagamuthu Tamilselvi has contributed in analysis of results. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. All authors agree to publish and participate as per the norms of the journal.

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Correspondence to James Kanagaraj.

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All procedures performed in studies involving dehairing systems were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Kanagaraj, J., Panda, R.C., Prasanna, R. et al. An efficient dehairing system supported by oxidative-enzymatic auxiliary towards sustainability. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 43817–43832 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-25380-3

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