Biodegradability of Hair as a Waste of Leather Industry

Leather industry is one of the sources, which releases keratin-containing wastes. Still now, most of the tanneries are following hair-burning process, which contribute high amount of COD, BOD, TDS etc., to the effluent. This is a reason why numerous investigations are done reaching to replace the hair burning process by hair save unhairing: enzymatic or unhairing with hair immunization. The aim of the study was to investigate the biodegradability peculiarities of native hair, hair after enzymatic unhairing and hair obtained by unhairing with immunization effect. The soil burial test was carried out and the biodegradability of the wool was estimated. The biodegradability of the wool was estimated analysing their mass loss and fungal colonization. It was established that hair samples behave differently during the exposition in the soil: there were determined different species of fungi after 3-month exposition. The mass loss was different as well. Accordingly, the hair obtained after different method of unhairing are different in their properties as well. The different properties should mean different behaviour of the hair during biodegradation.