Abstract: In order to study the hydrolysis of waste feather ＆down and the film forming property of the hydrolysis products, the waste feather ＆down which have been mechanical grinding into fine powder firstly, was hydrolyzed into polypeptide powder by reduction - caustic soda two-step hydrolysis technique. The study focused on the impact of factors such as reductant quantity, the temperature of hydrolysis and auxiliary on the productivity of polypeptide powder. Besides, film forming property of the products was also studied. The powder, polypeptide powder, and film forming were characterized by FTIR, XRD, DTG and SEM. The findings showed that the reduction - caustic soda two-step hydrolysis technique could improve the productivity of polypeptide powder. On the basis of the theory of one factor optimization, the condition of the reduction-caustic soda two-step hydrolysis technique is that the mercaptoacetic acid concentration is 0.2mol/L,reduction temperature is 80℃, urea concentration is 14g/L, LAS concentration is 2g/L in the reduction process. When the polypeptide powder was dissolved into formic acid, mechanical properties of film forming is good. Besides, SEM showed that reducing process corroded the powder obviously. According to the FTIR spectra the reduction process could broke the disulfide bond of feather ＆down powder. Meanwhile the heat endurance of hydrolysis product slightly decreased and the crystalline state also had a change after hydrolysis.

Key words: feather , &, down, hydrolysis, polypeptide powder, film forming