Enhanced cleaning of woolen fabrics through enzyme immobilisation

  • Jingdong An, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, The University of Auckland., New Zealand
  • Dr Darrell Patterson, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, The University of Auckland., New Zealand
  • Dr Steve McNeil, AgResearch Limited, New Zealand
  • Assoc Prof Md Monwar Hossain, Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates

    • The aim of this research is to produce an easy-cleaning woolen fabric by immobilising enzymes on the wool. Lipase from pseudomonas fluorescens was selected as the model enzyme and was cross-linked onto a woolen cloth using a polyethyleneimine spacer and glutaraldehyde as cross-linker.

    The cloth exhibited excellent oily stain removal ability: after being stained with olive oil and stored for one day in air at room temperature, the oily stain could be easily removed by 0.05 M pH 8.5 Tris buffer without any detergent addition. This enhanced cleaning was stable also, since after cloth was stored in air for almost one month, similar cleaning performance was observed. This is because the immobilized lipase was very stable: after removing the excess physical adsorbed lipase, almost no activity change was observed after more then 20 rounds of activity determination, measured via a p-nitrophenyl palmitate assay. Furthermore, when the immobilized cloth was stored in 0.05 M Tris buffer (pH 8.5) for almost 3 months in a refrigerator at 4oC, more than 80% of the lipase activity remained.

    Work is continuing to immobilize further enzymes to expand the potential uses of these enhanced woolen fabrics.