Films from an Aqueous Suspension of Alkaline Pretreated and Fine Milled Chicken Feathers

Abstract

The purpose was to test the feasibility of preparing cast films directly from an aqueous suspension of alkaline pretreated and fine milled chicken feathers, and to evaluate the impact of different additives on film formation and the tensile properties of the resulting films. The feather suspension consisted of stiff and sharp-pointed fibers together with more round-shaped fines. Films cast from this suspension were opaque and porous. While films without additives were fragile with drying-induced defects, film formation was improved with additives, especially with ethanolamine and maleic acid at 20% and 30% concentrations. A synergistic plasticizing effect was observed with ethanolamine and formamide, and strength of the films was improved with sodium alginate. However, the overall impact of additives on the tensile properties in general and strain at break in specific was limited. This was likely due to the dominating role of the porous film structure and the stiff fibers with a limited reactivity towards the additives.

Ductile keratin films from deep eutectic solvent-fractionated feathers

“… 4 This type of conversion can be done using different processing methods, from which dissolution and regeneration are probably the most potential ones. 1 More robust methods such as mechanical refining combined with an alkaline treatment 5 and thermal processing 6 have been used to prepare films from feathers. However, dissolving, and regenerating feathers could provide a scalable process resulting in a more uniform keratin fraction feasible for various types of products such as films.…”

Effect of pre-treatment of chicken feather on the degradation potential of Glutamicibacter arilaitensis

“…The predominant component of chicken feather is keratin, a crosslinked protein that is resistant to physio-chemical, biological and mechanical processes (Dabrowska et al, 2022) and also insoluble in conventional solvents due to the presence of high hydrophobic interactions with densely packed disulfide linkages (Qiu et al, 2022). Feather waste is commonly disposed of by several methods such as incineration, landfilling, and steam pressure cooking, which are expensive and diminish protein quality (Nisi et al, 2020). Tryptophan, methionine and histidine are lost during the acid hydrolysis of keratin, which results in significant protein fragmentation (Wei et al, 2017).…”