Proteolytic enzymes and their biochemical conversion potential in tannery solid waste management

There is a great need to address the tannery fleshing waste conversion using sustainable technologies to overcome the energy crisis and environmental pollution. Also, it requires some pretreatments to degrade and digest the tannery fleshings into biofuels. In the present research, reducing sugars present in the tannery fleshings were estimated using the dinitrosalicylic acid method and Lowry’s method for total protein estimation. Trypsin and papain, two proteolytic enzymes, were used in the trials together with various ratios of tannery fleshings. The bovine serum albumin (R2 = 0.9648) and glucose (R2 = 0.9793) were used for the standard run for total protein and reducing sugars. The total protein content on the first day was 2.78 mg/mL for the raw sample, 3.24 mg/mL for try3 and 3.31 mg/mL for pp2. The reducing sugars on the first day were 0.54 mg/mL for the raw sample, 0.713 mg/mL for try2 and 0.708 mg/mL for pp3. Both enzymes showed positive results towards the hydrolysis of fleshings for further processing. The FT-IR and SEM analysis revealed the presence of functional groups and the morphological changes during the conversion process of tannery fleshings.