28 Dehairing of goat skins and buffalo hides
Wet salted goat skins and buffalo hides were used for dehairing experiments. A mini drum (cylindrical rotating reactor, used for hide and leather processing) fitted at shaking (15 rpm) was used for the experiment. The skins and hides were cut into two halves along the backbone. The left half was used for conventional dehairing using lime and sulphide representing as control in the study and the right half was used for enzymatic dehairing. Prior to dehairing, the skins and and soaked in water (300x v/wt) for 4-6 h with intermittent changing for removing salt, dirt and blood. The soaked weight of all the left and right halves were noted and the percentage of chemicals and enzyme used in the experiment was based on this soaked weight. For the conventional process paste method was used in which 10x lime and 2% sodium sulphide were mixed with 10% water and the paste thus prepared was applied on the flesh side (Sivasubramanian et al., 2008b). It was left overnight at room temperature and then dehaired by rubbing. For enzymatic group, optimized dip method was adopted, wherein the soaked skins were dipped in water float (pH 8 t 0.5, 200% vlwt) containing 100 U ml enzyme. The float was left for 8 h at 25 t 5 Cand then dehaired by rubbing. Depilated skins/hides were visually assessed and quality of hair removed was studied by light microscope. After dehairing, conventional industrial procedures were followed to convert the chemical and enzyme treated dehaired pelts into dyed crusts.