Kinetics of enzymatic unhairing by protease in leather industry

Abstract In leather industry, unhairing is a heavy pollution operation. The conventional lime–sulfide process produces a large amount of sulfide which is toxic to health and difficult to dispose. Moreover, conventional lime–sulfide process leads to the destruction of the hair causing increased COD, BOD and TDS loads in the effluent. As an alternative method, enzymatic unhairing is a promising clean technology. The main utilized enzyme preparations are proteases. There are many reports about enzymatic unhairing, most of which are qualitative. The kinetics of enzymatic unhairing by protease was discussed in this article. It will provide useful information to enzymatic unhairing. In our research, by analysis of the concentrations of released total protein in enzyme bath during protease unhairing, the good linearity between released total protein and square root of time (min 1/2 ) was obtained at the initial stage. The good linearity suggests that enzymatic unhairing by protease is a diffusion-controlled process at the initial stage. The analysis of kinetics of released saccharides also confirms the same conclusion. On the other hand, the same characteristics between the kinetics of released saccharides and that of released total protein further confirms that it is the hydrolysis of core protein by protease that leads to the degradation of proteoglycans and the release of protein and saccharides. However, in our tests, the kinetics of released collagen indicates that the injury to skin took place in 3–6 h. Therefore, it’s necessary to control the time of protease unhairing within an appropriate limit.