Study On The Extraction Of Human Hair Keratin, Preparation Of Fibers And Finishing Of Cotton Fabrics

Human hair keratin is a natural renewable polymer. It has many excellent advantages such as rich source, high biological activity, low immunity, good biocompatibility,biodegradability, and so on. In recent years, human hair keratin has been extensively used in the area of biological materials. However, the extraction and application in other areas of human hair keratin are still in the primary stage. Therefore, it is very important for the recovery and utilization of human hair keratin. In this paper, we focus on the research of the extration of human hair keratin by the mixture solvent system of sodium hydroxide/sodium sulfite/sodium dodecyl sulfate, the preparation of human hair keratin/calcium alginate blend films and fibers, and the application of human hair keratin solution for the modification of cotton fabrics.The alkali-reduction method was used to dissolve the non-defatted human hair.Taking the dissolution rate of human hair and the extraction rate of human hair keratin as test indexes of single factor experiments. The results showed that the dissolution rate was up to 92.23% and the extraction rate was 82.31% when sodium hydroxide was 6 g/L,sodium sulfite was 30 g/L, SDS was 10 g/L and reacted at 80℃ for 3h. Human hair keratin is a beige powder that the molecular weight distribution was below 37 kDa. The mass fraction of human hair keratin solution was 57.08g/L and had good stability.The preparation of human hair keratin/calcium alginate blend films was used of calcium chloride as coagulation bath. Two components in the blend film have good compatibility due to the presence of calcium bridges and hydrogen bonds. However, large molecular aggregates were increased with the increase of the protein content of human hair, which was also affected the light transmittance, the tensile strength, the elongation atbreak and the liquid absorption of the blend films.The preparation of human hair keratin/calcium alginate blend fibers was used of wet spinning process. With the increase of the protein content of human hair, the thermal properties of the blend fibers were almost no effect, but the whiteness and the softness were decreased. Furthermore, the surface of the fibers gradually became rough and the number of grooves increased obviously. The breaking strength, the elongation at break and the liquid absorption of the blend fibers were also changed.The human hair keratin solution without dialysis was used for the modified finishing of the cotton fabric. Through the comparison and optimization of the finishing process and taking the UV resistance and mechanical properties as test indexes of single factor experiments, the optimum modification processing were determined: the concentration of sodium periodate was 15g/L, the quality percentage concentration of human hair keratin liquid was 25g/L, the pH value of treatment solution was 6, the treatment time was 2h and the treatment temperature was 50℃. The performance tests of human hair keratin crosslinked cotton fabric were showd that the properties of anti ultraviolet, water absorption and crease recovery were all significantly increased, and had good washing fastness. However, the mechanical properties, whiteness and water vapor permeability were decreased slightly. The structure tests of human hair keratin crosslinked cotton fabric were showd that the human hair keratin has good adsorption and film formation,the amino group of the amino group and the aldehyde group in the oxidized cotton fiber can be used to produce the base, but the crystallinity of the fabric is slightly decreased.