Keratin proteins are the major components of hair, feathers, wool and horns and represent an important source of renewable raw materials for many applications. The dissolution of the wool keratin is the first step of reuse of keratin wastes. In this work, L-cysteine was applied to the dissolution of wool keratin for the first time as a reducing agent. The dissolution time was 5 h at 75°C with 72% dissolubility. XRD, ATR-FTIR and 13 C NMR showed that the content of α-helix structures in regenerated wool keratin was decreased compared with natural wool. The content of S-S crosslinkages for regenerated wool keratin significantly decreased and broke about 62% of the S-S crosslinkages in the natural wool, as observed from Raman spectra.

Ceramic membranes characterised by corrosion resistance, high-temperature applicability, and reusability are especially suitable for wastewater treatment. In this research, Titania dioxide (TiO 2 ) was fabricated on surfaces of alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) membranes by hydrothermal reaction and factors that influenced their morphologies were investigated. SEM images showed needle-like TiO 2 crystals filling up the pores on the membrane surfaces. We investigated the photocatalytic activity and continuous separation performance of the TiO 2 coating alumina membranes using Congo red dye as a model organic pollutant. The results showed that the dye removal ratio remained at about 98% in a 120 h continuous filtration test. Furthermore, we proposed an easy and low-cost membrane regeneration method based on the photocatalytic degradation of TiO 2 crystals. The regenerated membrane still showed excellent continuous filtration ability, indicating the good potential application in the treatment of dye effluents.