Cellulase immobilized on kaolin as a potential approach to improve the quality of knitted fabric

Biopolishing is a textile process that uses cellulases to improve the pilling resistance of fabrics. Although the process improves the pilling resistance, softness and color brightness of fabrics, it causes a significant loss of tensile strength in treated fabrics. The present work studied the use of cellulase immobilized on kaolin by adsorption and covalent bonding in biopolishing to get around this problem. The cellulase immobilization has been reported as promising alternative to overcome the inconvenient of biopolishing, but it has been very poorly explored. The results showed that cellulase immobilized by both covalent bonding and adsorption methods provided to the knitted fabric similar or superior pilling resistance to free cellulase, but with greater tensile strength. Immobilization also allowed for efficient recovery and reuse of the enzyme. The present work is a relevant contribution to the literature, since, as far as we know, it is the first work that shows it is possible to minimize the loss of tensile strength and also reuse the immobilized enzyme, giving a better-quality product and also contribution to reducing the cost of the polishing step.