Depolarization thermal current study of keratin for high water contents

The characteristics (temperature and activation energy) of peak I for S.C., hair and ice are very close. This fact implies, at high water content in the keratin structures, the existence of water molecules loosely bound to the protein. In hair, the sorption isotherm increases more rapidly in this range and molar heat of sorption, which is 13.6 Kcal/mole at low water contents, falls to 4.4 Kcal/mole when the water content is approximatively 19%¹⁰. On the other hand, the electric conductivity studies show that the activation energy for the conduction process in wool keratin decreases from 24 to 15 Kcal/mole ¹¹ as the humidity is increased from 0 to 85% (that is about 20% of water content).