Wool suint

Wool is the name given to hair shorn from sheep, goats, llamas, etc. In raw wool, the fibers are bound together with lanolin, wool suint, and vegetable impurities which first must be removed by carbonization. 

Wool belongs to the family of proteins (qv) called keratins. However, morphologically the fiber is a composite and each of the components differs in chemical composition. Principally the components are proteinaceous, although wool cleaned of wax, suint, and other extraneous materials acquired during growth contains small amounts of Hpids (stmctural and free), trace elements, and, in colored fibers, pigments called melanin. 

In wool scouring, the contaminants on the wool, mainly grease, dirt, suint, and protein material, are washed off the fiber and remain in the wastewaters either in emulsions or suspension (grease, dirt, protein) or in solution (suint). Centrifugal extraction of the wastewaters produces a grease contaminated with detergent and suint. This product is called wool grease. 

Schweiss, m. sweat, perspiration suint, yolk (of wool). 

Schweiss-warme, /. welding heat, -wasser, n. water condensed on a surface. -woUe, /. wool containing suint, wool in the yolk. 

WoU-kraut, n. mullen, -ol, n. wool oil. -pul-ver, n. wool flock, wool powder, -schmlere, /. (wool) yolk, suint wool softener, -schwarz, n. wool black. 

Wool fat or suint.—The potash found in plants is obtained from the soil and the potash in the soil is one product of the decomposition of rocks which form the earth s crust. The potash which herbivorous animals—e.g. sheep—draw from the land is largely exuded as an oily sweat from the skin, and called, after the French, suint. In the first century of our era, Dioscorides called the mixture of wool fat and water oTowos, eesypus, a name which it retained up to the middle of the seventeenth century. CEsypus is mentioned several times by Ovid. In spite of its disagreeable smell it appears to have been used by the Boman ladies as one of their choice cosmetics. It is mentioned in N. Culpeper s Pharmacopoeia Londi-nensis (London, 1653), but it soon afterwards disappeared from the pharmacopoeia... 

To observe the role of chemical cues in the sexual behavior of males of small mammals, we can alter the odor of females. Hair is a great substrate for odor-carrying lipids. For example, the behaviorally active body odors of sheep reside in the wool fat, also known as suint. Removing hpids from the fur of female mice reduces the lipophilic odorants significantly. Hair near skin glands is often anatomically modified into osmetrichia to hold sebum on its cuticular surface (Miiller-Schwarze et al. 1977). 

Wool fat is obtained from extracts of soapy water in which sheep s wool has been washed or extracted with solvents from grease wool. Lanolin is obtained by purifying the grease (or suint). This emollient is a yellow and viscous substance, consisting of fatty acids and fatty acid esters. 

Type Fat and suint Sand and dirt Vegetable matter Wool fibre... 

Raw wool is difficult to spin because of the natural grease/wax (yolk), large perspiration salts termed suint, acquired impurities like vegetable matters, dirt, proteinaceous contaminant layers (PCL) and wool burrs which contain hemi-cellulose... 

In this process the dusted raw wool is steeped in water at 16 C and then the liquor is withdrawn and clarified by sedimentation or centrifuging [35], The pH of the suint liquor is between 5.5 to 8.8. For removal of wax the sumt liquor should be heated at 60 C, when wax is emulsified. The material is in then rinsed, washed with soap and finally rinsed in the subsequent bowl. 

About 90% of the wool wax can be removed by this system. The recommended solvents are benzene, carbontetrachloride, solvent naptha, white spirit, trichloroethane etc. In one method solvent is applied under high pressure jet on the material placed on a permeable conveyer and dislodges much of the dirt and suint apart from removal of wax from the fibre [36]. The solvent content on the treated wool is reduced to about 45% by passing through the rollers and is further reduced to about 10% by centrifuging. Finally, the residual solvent is removed from the fibre by blowing hot air [37]. 

Scouring of wool is mainly done by detergent and solvent. The main components of wool scouring waste water are wool grease, suint and dirt and excrement. Table 13.13 shows the pollutant load of the wool scouring effluent. The detergent... 

The impurities are wool fat, suint (which is dried perspiration), dirt, mineral matter, and burrs (which are dried vegetablo matter). As an example, the approximate composition, per cent, of a dirty wool might be Keratin, 33... 

This is soluble in water and can be isolated from the raw wool by aqueous extraction. It contains potassium salts of fatty acids, such as oleic and stearic acids, and potassium carbonate is also present. The simpler organic acids, such as acetic, lactic, butyric, valeric, and capronic acids, have also been found both in the free state and as their potassium salts. Amino acids such as leucine, glycine, and tyrosine have been detected. Suint, therefore, is a complex mixture this might be expected because it is derived from sweat, which is known to be one of the means by which an animal discards unwanted waste products of its metabolism. 

When all impurities have been removed, keratin remains. This is prepared in a chemically pure state in the laboratory by extracting dry wool in a soxhiet with ether to remove the oil and fat, and then with alcohol to take away the soaps. The residue is next dried and immersed in warm distilled water to dissolve the suint, after which it is soaked in a 1 per cent solution of hydrochloric acid to decompose any calcium or magnesium soaps which may be present. After rinsing in distilled water the wool is dried and extracted again with ether to remove the fatty acids which have been liberated, and finally rinsed in dilute ammonia till free from acid before drying. Keratin which has been purified in this way has the following average composition. 

Cholesterin combines with the fatty acids to form ethers, corresponding to the fats, and it probably exists in nature largely in such combination. Lanolin is a neutral, fatty body consisting of such cholesteiids, or cholesterin ethere, obtained from suint, or wool fat. It is used as a vehicle in pharmacy, possessing two advantages over the fats and over vaseline it is rapidly absorbed by the skin, and is miscible with water in all proportions. 

Redundancy. In many behavioral contexts, signals sent simultaneously or consecutively in several sensory modalities achieve the same effect. As early as 1977, Barlow noted that multichannel redundancy is almost the rule . Priming cues in domestic sheep constitute an example of such multisensory signals. Chemicals from the ram, specifically hexadecanediol-1,2 and octa-decanediol-1,2 contained in the suint (wool fat), but also visual and tactile stimuli from the ram stimulate LH secretion and ovulation in ewes (Pearce and Oldham, 1988). 

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