Preparation And Properties Of Human Hair Protein Blend Membrane

Keratin is widely found in human’s and animal’s skin and hair and keratin is a kind of excellent natural biological composite material. In order to solve the phenomenon of wasting human hair, the keratin which is extracted from discarded hunman hair is used to prepare keratin membrane for the preliminary research of preparing textile. In order to improve the human hair protein film-forming performance, the more excellent blended membrane was prepared by mixing human hair protein, sodium alginate and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. Sodium alginate and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose(CMC) are natural polymer materials and their membranes are easily to prepared. They have a variety of sources, non-toxic and biodegradable, which is widely used in the preparation of the fiber material.The human hair protein/sodium alginate blended membranes and human hair protein / alginate / sodium carboxymethyl cellulose blended membranes were prepared by mixing human hair protein solution, sodium alginate solution and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose in different weight ratio with different concentration of Ca Cl2 as coagulation bath. The properties of the blended membranes including compatibility property, mechanical property, swelling rate and moisture absorption and moisture retention were investigated in this study. The structure of the blended membranes was characterized by IR, SEM and XRD. The results are listed as follows:(1) the blended membranes were uniform and transparent and the film-forming performance had been improved significantly.(2)when the weight ratio of sodium alginate to human hair protein is 2:1 and the CaCl2 concentration was 3%, the human hair protein/sodium alginate blended membrane obtained good properties. The breaking strength was 5.04 Mpa, elongation at break is 15.73%,moisture absorption rate was 14.04%, moisture retention was 57.89%,swelling rate was 48.55%. When the content of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose was 20% and the CaCl2 concentration was 4%, human hair protein / alginate / sodium carboxymethyl cellulose blended membranes obtained good properties. The breaking strength was 4.68 Mpa, elongation at break is 10.48%,moisture absorption rate was 17.60%, moisture retention was 65.45%,swelling rate was 46.12%. As temperature rised, the swelling rate and dissolution rate increased, but when the water temperature was 30℃, the blended membrane had low swelling rate and dissolution rate.(3) The human hair keratin membrane performance was significantly improved by mixing sodium alginate, sodium carboxymethyl cellulose and human hair keratin and human hair keratin improved strength of sodium alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose. The blended membrane had good performance in moisture absorption and moisture retention. The blended membrane moisture absorption properties was improved when the sodium carboxymethyl cellulose was added and made the blend membrane softer. These two kinds of membranes exhibit high prospect on the application to textile industry.