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Sustainable production of bacterial flocculants by nylon-6,6 microplastics hydrolysate utilizing Brucella intermedia ZL-06
Summary
Researchers isolated a bacterium, Brucella intermedia ZL-06, capable of producing a polysaccharide-based flocculant that effectively captures nylon-6,6 microplastics from water. The study then demonstrated that the recovered microplastic-flocculant mixture could be used as a sustainable carbon source for further bacterial growth, presenting a novel circular approach to both removing microplastics from sewage and recycling the captured material.
Nylon-6,6 microplastics (NMPs) in aquatic systems have emerged as potential contaminants to the global environment and have garnered immense consideration over the years. Unfortunately, there is currently no efficient method available to eliminate NMPs from sewage. This study aims to address this issue by isolating Brucella intermedia ZL-06, a bacterium capable of producing a bacterial polysaccharide-based flocculant (PBF). The PBF generated from this bacterium shows promising efficacy in effectively flocculating NMPs. Subsequently, the precipitated flocs (NMPs + PBF) were utilized as sustainable feedstock for synthesizing PBF. The study yielded 6.91 g/L PBF under optimum conditions. Genome sequencing analysis was conducted to study the mechanisms of PBF synthesis and nylon-6,6 degradation. The PBF exhibited impressive flocculating capacity of 90.1 mg/g of PBF when applied to 0.01 mm NMPs, aided by the presence of Ca. FTIR and XPS analysis showed the presence of hydroxyl, carboxyl, and amine groups in PBF. The flocculation performance of PBF conformed to Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-first-order adsorption kinetics model. These findings present a promising approach for reducing the production costs of PBF by utilizing NMPs as sustainable nutrient sources.