Immobilization of cellulase and its characterization for biopolishing of cotton fabrics

Abstract

Biopolishing is the process of enzymatic treatment of removal of protruding fibres on the surface of the cotton fabric. The removal of protruding fibres improves the surface roperties like softer feel, lustrous look, resistance to pilling etc. The drawbacks of biopolishing of cotton fabrics using free cellulase is, size of free cellulase is 60 Å, it can easily penetrates into the fibre structure which affects the strength of the fibreand the stability of free enzyme is less during the process and also therecovery of free cellulase after the biopolishing is difficult. Therefore there is a need to modify the enzyme by immobilization technique in order to avoid these drawbacks of using free cellulase. The present investigation covers the studies conducted to reduce loss in strength of fabric during biopolishing of cotton fabric. The biopolishing was conducted with both free cellulase and immobilized cellulase enzyme. The feasibility of the immobilized enzyme was studied by analyzing physical, structural and functional properties of the treated fabrics. Moreover, the method of immobilization was easy, it does not affect the activity of native enzyme, and it is economically feasible when compared with other immobilized enzyme used for biopolishing process. In this research work, the following studies were carried out: i. Immobilization of cellulase onto Concanavalin A layered calcium alginate bead. ii. Biopolishing of cotton fabric with free cellulase and optimizing its process parameters using desirability function analysis. iii. Biopolishing of cotton fabric with immobilized cellulase and optimizing its process parameters using desirability function analysis iv. Comparison of physical properties of fabric treated with free and immobilized cellulose v. Structural characteristics of cellulose after enzymatic treatment newline newline newline