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We report a novel application of sorghum husk extracts (SHE) as a natural functional dye for wool fabrics. Sorghum husk is an abundant, cheap and readily available agricultural byproduct. A small proportion of sorghum husk has been used to extract food colorants. In order to add value to sorghum and decrease environmental pollution, a number of investigations need to be undertaken to explore newer application for the husk. This paper investigated the stability of SHE, the colorfastness, UV-protection and fluorescence properties of dyed wool fabrics with SHE by different dyeing methods. SHE had good thermal and pH stability suitable for the dyeing and finishing processes of textiles. Wool fabrics dyed directly or with Al3+ and Fe2+ mordant demonstrated good colorfastness to washing, to rubbing, to wet ironing and acceptable colorfastness to light. The dyed wool fabrics showed good UV-protection and fluorescence properties. After 30 home laundering cycles, the UV-Protection Factor (UPF) and fluorescence intensity of wool fabrics dyed with SHE were still remarkably higher than those of wool fabrics dyed with mixed synthetic dyes with similar shade and depth and undyed fabric. SHE would be a feasible alternative for some synthetic dyes and functional finishing agent.

Chicken feather, a potential source of keratin, is often disposed as waste material. Although some methods, i.e., hydrolysis, reduction, and oxidation, have been developed to isolate keratin for composites, it has been limited due to the rising environmental concerns. In this work, a green solvent N-methylmorpholine N-oxide (NMMO) was used to extract keratin from chicken feather waste. Eighty-nine percent of keratin was extracted using 75% NMMO solution. However, the result from size exclusion HPLC showed that most of the keratin degraded into polypeptide with molecular weight of 2189 and only 25.3% regenerated keratin was obtained with molecular weight of 14,485. Analysis of amino acid composition showed a severe damage to the disulfide bonds in keratin during the extraction procedure. Oxidization had an important effect on the reconstitution of the disulfide bonds, which formed a stable three-dimensional net structure in the regenerated keratins. Besides, Raman spectra, NMR, FT-IR, XRD, and TGA were used to characterize the properties of regenerated keratin and raw chicken feather. In the end, a possible mechanism was proposed based on the results.