Biotechnology Of Wool: The Use Of Biotechnology For Wool

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Biotechnology for wool Wool plays an important role among the proteinaceous fibers. Although wool is considered all over the world a high-grade, valuable textile material, for many different purposes, a regularly constant decreasing in the market value of wool could be noticed. Improvement in selecting the raw wool by a good management for the acquisition [166] may change the today position of wool among other textile fibers. The today preference for synthetic fibers has to be reconsidered taking into account the decision to reduce the fossil consumption in favor of renewable raw materials [167]. The road from raw wool to the textile product contains a number of energy consuming operations, like: Carbonization→ Washing → Crabbing→ Dyeing → Finishing A solution for making these processes eco-friendly is to use biotechnology [168]. Wool carbonization consists in the elimination of the cellulosic residues present on the raw wool. It is usually performed with concentrate sulfuric acid delivering strong acidic wastewaters. The use of enzymes in this process represents a possibility to diminish pollution as well as the water and energy consumed. According literature, partial carbonization with cellulolytic enzymes has been realized [169]. Other studies involving Cellulases have …show more content…

Due to the complex structure of the wool fiber, which has overlapping scales at the external surface, the shrinking phenomenon appears. Modification in dimensions for wool products during use (washing especially), constitutes a major obstacle in wool applications in textiles, despite its qualities (e.g. comfort in cold as well as in hot weather, temperature insulating property, robustness, superior flame resistance, biodegradability, etc) [176, 19]. The shrinkage is often the reason for consumer complaints and reduced functionality of wool based materials. Thus, wool represents a minor segment of the total textile fibers globally produced

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