Research interest in the metal adsorption capacity of new mem-branes made of protein nanofibres has been intensified in recent
years. Among the natural proteins, keratin, being the major com-ponent of wools, hairs, horns, nails, and feathers, is an abundant
non-food protein characterized by a large number of hydrophilic
amino acids with high affinity to ionic species (e.g. heavy-metals
or dyes). Moreover, keratin wastes as feathers, horns-nails from
butchery, poor quality raw wools from sheep breeding and by-products from the textile industry account worldwide for more
than five millions tons per year. For the aforementioned reasons,
keratin is an interesting low cost biomass to be exploited. Electro-spun nanofibrous membranes based on keratin have been widely
investigated for the heavy-metal ions removal from water both in
batch and in dynamic conditions [16–18]. However, to the best
of our knowledge, there is no literature focusing on the adsorp-tion capacity of cationic dyes onto the keratin-based nanofibrous membranes