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

Abstract A method of dehairing of goat skins using oxidative chemicals and protease enzyme has been attempted. Dehairing process is one of the important and essential steps in the leather making, where hair is removed by lime and sodium sulphide in the conventional process. This conventional dehairing system generates 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 agent namely magnesium peroxide and protease enzyme were useful for dehairing of goat skins. For this, protease have been produced from Bacillus sp. at laboratory level and the activity was found out. The dehairing of goat skins takes place for the duration of 14–16 hours. The leather produced with the experimental sample showed comparable organoleptic and strength properties with the conventional sample. This method paved the way for 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 from the Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiment and mathematical model has been formulated. The dyed crust leather showed comparable colour properties. In addition to that, there is reduction in processing time for leather making through skipping reliming and deliming processes which is said to be another advantage of this method. The physical strength properties of the experimental leather were also comparable with conventionally produced leather.