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Interaction mechanisms between microplastics and environmental endocrine disruptors during hydrothermal treatment of sludge
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Hydrothermal treatment of sewage sludge microplastics reduced their release of bisphenol A and phenol compared to untreated microplastics, while sludge components enhanced adsorption of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals onto the microplastic surface. This is important because sludge is widely applied to agricultural land as fertilizer, and microplastics in sludge act as carriers that can mobilize endocrine disruptors into soils, crops, and ultimately human food and water.
The mutual laws between microplastics and system pollutants during the process of sludge resource utilization urgently need to be revealed to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the sludge resource utilization path. In this work, we investigated the morphological alterations of microplastics in sludge during hydrothermal processing, as well as the interaction between the latter of bisphenol A and phenol. The results demonstrated that, the quantity of bisphenol A and phenol released from sludge microplastics was less than that released from the original microplastics after hydrothermal treatment. This suggested that the interaction between sludge microplastics and pollutants after hydrothermal treatment can impede the release of bisphenol A and phenol. In comparison to the original microplastics, the release of bisphenol A in microplastics after hydrothermal treatment reached 9.63 mg/g, whereas the sludge microplastics adsorbed bisphenol A. The release of Phenol from microplastics after hydrothermal treatment increased up to 49.33 mg/g. The sludge microplastics hydrothermally treated for 5 and 7 h showed a decrease in the release of phenol compared with that of pure water hydrothermal treatment. This indicated that the adsorption capacity of sludge microplastics was relatively strong. Following a hydrothermal treatment of the sludge microplastics for 7 h, the formation of fine particles on the surface of the microplastics was observed. The resulting material exhibited a significant adsorption potential for bisphenol A, with an adsorption capacity of 0.80 mg/g. Furthermore, the characterization results indicated that under hydrothermal treatment, the surface morphology, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, surface functional groups and crystallinity of sludge microplastics underwent alteration, which subsequently affected its interaction with bisphenol A and phenol. These results suggest that hydrothermal sludge treatment reduces bisphenol A and phenol leaching risks by 4-fold, supporting its adoption over conventional methods. This was a raw study to quantify bisphenol A and phenol release inhibition by sludge microplastics during hydrothermal treatment. Microplastics may have a significant impact on the migration and transformation of organic pollutants during sludge treatment, and its potential harm to the ecology deserves further attention.
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