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Article history: Keratin was extracted from chicken feathers by using a hydrophobic ionic liquid (IL), 1-hydroxyethyl-3-
Received 4 September 2011 methylimidazolium bis(triuoromethanesulfonyl)amide ([HOEMIm][NTf2 ]). Extracted keratin has good
Received in revised form 5 January 2012 solubility in water while the ionic liquid is immiscible with water, and therefore the extracted keratin
Accepted 14 February 2012
could be easily separated from the reaction system by water. The effects of ionic liquid, NaHSO3 , reaction
Available online 22 February 2012
temperature and time were investigated and extracting conditions were optimized. The maximum yield
of keratin was up to about 21% with mass ratio of feathers to NaHSO3 1:1 and mass ratio of feathers to
Keywords:
ionic liquid 1:40 at 80 C for 4 h. Moreover, there was no obvious loss in the yield after ionic liquid was
Ionic liquid
1-hydroxyethyl-3-methylimidazolium
reused for ve batches under optimized conditions. In addition, the recovery of ionic liquid was about
bis(triuoromethanesulfonyl)amide 95% each time. The results indicated that [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was very efcient as catalyst and solvent for
Keratin dissolving feathers and could be easily recovered due to its hydrophobicity.
Chicken feathers 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Separation
1359-5113/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.procbio.2012.02.013
Y.-X. Wang, X.-J. Cao / Process Biochemistry 47 (2012) 896899 897
Table 1
Water content of equilibrated and dried IL; solubility in water of IL.
Ionic liquid Water equilibrateda (g/100 ml) Driedb (g/100 ml) Water solubility (g/100 ml)
a
Water equilibrated refers to IL that has been stored in contact with water, which incorporates vigorous agitation and mixing.
b
Dried IL is water equilibrated IL that has been dried at 70 C for 6 h on a vacuum line.
reaction temperature and time on the extraction yield of keratin 3.2. Solubility of chicken feathers in ionic liquid
were investigated and the reusability of ionic liquid was also stud-
ied. Furthermore, the extracted keratin was analyzed by infrared 3.2.1. Effect of mass ratio of feathers and NaHSO3 on the yield of
spectrometry (IR) to conrm its structure and determined by gel keratin
permeation chromatography (GPC) to get its molecular weight. To reduce the disulde bonds, the reaction was carried out
with various mass ratio of feathers to NaHSO3 (1:0, 1:0.3, 1:0.5,
2. Materials and methods 1:0.75, 1:1, 1:1.25 and 1:1.5) under identical conditions. As shown
in Fig. 1a, the extraction yield of keratin increased obviously with
2.1. Water content and solubility in water
the increasing of mass ratio from 1:0 to 1:1 and then very slowly
The water content of [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was determined using a volumetric from 1:1.25 to 1:1.5.
Aquastar Karl Fischer titrator (Super Scientech, Shanghai, China) with composite It suggested that more disulde bonds of feather keratin were
5 solution as the titrant and anhydrous methanol as the solvent. Each sample was destroyed with higher mass ratio. Nevertheless, it also showed that
at least 0.5 g and duplicate measurements were performed. the yield did not have signicant increase when the mass ratio sur-
The absorption spectrum of [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was measured by full wave-
passed 1.0. This effect could be because all the disulde bonds of
length scan with UVvis spectrophotometer (PerkinElmer Lamda 900). In a 10 ml
polypropylene centrifuge tube, 1.0 g of the ionic liquid and 2.5 ml of deionized water feather keratin were reduced when excessive NaHSO3 was sup-
were shaken on a vortex mixer for 30 min and centrifuged for 15 min at 4000 rpm. plied. In the reaction system without NaHSO3 , the yield of extracted
A 2 l aliquot of the aqueous phase was taken with a microsyringe and diluted to keratin was up to 7.86% only relying on the hyperpolarity of ionic
5 ml with deionized water. The absorbance of this solution at maximum absorption
liquid [HOEMIm][NTf2 ]. Therefore, the optimal mass ratio was 1:1
peak was measured and compared with that obtained from dissolving a weighed
amount (0.10.6 mg) of the ionic liquid in 5 ml of deionized water [19]. considering both the yield of keratin and the production costs.
2.2. Preparation of feather keratin solution 3.2.2. Effect of mass ratio of feathers and ionic liquid on the yield
of keratin
Before dissolution, chicken feathers were washed with water, ltered, dried and
cut into small pieces or milled. Reactions were performed in a round ask containing The dissolution of feathers can be divided into two stages,
1.0 g chicken feathers, 40 g ionic liquid, 1.0 g NaHSO3 and 500 l water. The mixture including swelling and solubilization. The rst stage is that solvent
was agitated at 80 C for 4 h. After the process was nalized, water (20 g, 50% wt, molecules gradually permeate into feathers so that the physi-
based on the weight of ionic liquid) was added to the mixture and tri-phase sys- cal interactions of feather keratin are taken place by interactions
tems containing ionic liquid/parts of insolubilized feathers/keratin solution were
formed after centrifugation. Then the system of keratin solution was ltered, and
between solvent molecules and feather keratin. The second stage
the ltrate was transferred to dialysis bag (MWCO 35005000 Da) and extensively is that chains of feather keratin unfold from aggregation due to
dialyzed against distilled water for 48 h. The protein concentration of the extracts salvation effects and reduction of disulde bonds. Therefore, solu-
was measured by the Bradford protein assay method (BioRad), using bovine serum bility of feathers is signicantly related to polarity of ionic liquid
albumin as standard. The amount of protein dissolved was expressed as a percent-
and the yield of keratin is increased with the increasing polarity
age of the total weight of dried feathers used. In addition, the other two systems
were vacuumized for 6 h (70 C) and introduced into the fresh substrates for the of ionic liquid. Reactions were conducted with different mass ratio
next batch. The recovery of ionic liquid was expressed as a percentage of the total of feathers to ionic liquid (1:20, 1:25, 1:30, 1:40, 1:45 and 1:50)
weight of it used. under identical conditions. As a result (Fig. 1b), although the high-
est yield of 21.75% was obtained when the mass ratio was 1:45, the
2.3. Molecular weight of feather keratin yield of keratin was increased slowly with mass ratio from 1:40 to
1:45 and declined with further increase of mass ratio. This effect
The molecular weight of extracted keratin was determined by gel permeation
could be attributed to that ionic liquid [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] could pro-
chromatography. It was carried out on a PerkinElmer Series 200 system at 35 C
(TSKgel PWXL 10 m, 7.8 300 mm column). 0.05 M NaNO3 was used as the eluent duce electrostatic and hydrogen-bond interactions between itself
and the ow rate was 0.8 ml/min. and feather keratin [20]. It also indicated that part of peptide bond
of feather keratin was disrupted when excessive amounts of ionic
liquid were applied. From these results, the mass ratio of feathers
3. Results and discussion
to ionic liquid 1:40 was adopted in the subsequent experiments
considering the cost of ionic liquid.
3.1. Properties of [HOEMIm][NTf2 ]
According to full wavelength scan, [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] existed 3.2.3. Effects of reaction temperature and time on the yield of
maximum absorption peak at 217.5 nm, which mainly attributes keratin
to imidazole ring in the ionic liquid. As shown in Table 1, the water Temperature is an important factor affecting the yield of keratin,
content of equilibrated [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was 4.89%(w/v) and the and the rate of dissolution of feather keratin at various tempera-
solubility of [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] in water was 7.941%(w/v), which tures (70100 C) was determined while keeping other conditions
indicated that [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was slightly soluble in water and constant. From the Fig. 1c, it can be seen that the yield increased
maximum recovery of it could be up to 96% (50% wt water, based on obviously with temperature from 70 C to 80 C and approached at
the weight of ionic liquid). Moreover, [HOEMIm][NTf2 ] possesses stage from 80 C to 90 C. It was because higher reaction tempera-
unexpected hyperpolarity close to protic ILs and water [20], ture can provide much energy to accelerate physical and chemical
which could greatly enhance the dissolution of feathers. Therefore, change of feather keratin and thus promote the dissolution of
[HOEMIm][NTf2 ] was a proper ionic liquid for extracting keratin feathers. However, when the temperature was over 90 C, the
from feathers. yield decreased markedly. Peptide bond scission of feather keratin
898 Y.-X. Wang, X.-J. Cao / Process Biochemistry 47 (2012) 896899
Fig. 1. (a) Effect of mass ratio of feathers and NaHSO3 on the extraction yield of keratin. Reaction conditions: mass ratio of feathers to ionic liquid 1:20, 500 l water, 80 C,
4 h. (b) Effect of mass ratio feathers and ionic liquid on the extraction yield of keratin. Reaction conditions: mass ratio of feathers to NaHSO3 1:1, 1.0 g NaHSO3 , 500 l water,
80 C, 4 h. (c) Effect of reaction temperature on the extraction yield of keratin. Reaction conditions: mass ratio of feathers to NaHSO3 1:1, mass ratio of feathers to ionic liquid
1:40, 500 l water, 4 h. (d) Effect of reaction time on the extraction yield of keratin. Reaction conditions: mass ratio of feathers to NaHSO3 1:1, mass ratio of feathers to ionic
liquid 1:40, 500 l water, 80 C.
keratin were 10,240 and 10,000 respectively. This GPC data agrees
with published data that feather keratin consists of 96 amino acid
residues and has a molecular weight of 10,206 [6]. The polydis-
persion degree was at the level of 1.024, which shows that the
extracted keratin was uniform in its molecular weight. However,
the yield of extracted keratin was less 25%, probably because ker-
atin was degraded to amino acids and small peptides and not
separated from reaction mixture completely.
4. Conclusions
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