Solving urban water microplastics with bacterial cellulose hydrogels: Leveraging predictive computational models

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The prevalence of microplastics (MPs) in both urban and aquatic ecosystems is concerning, with wastewater treatment plants being considered one of the major sources of the issue. As the focus on developing sustainable solutions increases, unused remnants from bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes were ground to form BC hydrogels as potential bioflocculants of MPs. The influence of operational parameters such as BC:MPs ratio, hydrogel grinding, immersion and mixing time, temperature, pH, ionic strength, and metal cations on MPs flocculation and dispersion were evaluated. A response surface methodology based on experimental data sets was computed to understand how these parameters influence the flocculation process. Further, both the BC hydrogel and the hetero-aggregation of MPs were characterised by UV–Vis, ATR-FTIR, IGC, water uptake assays, fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. These highlights that the BC hydrogel would be fully effective at hetero-aggregating MPs in naturally-occurring concentrations, thereby not constituting a limiting performance factor for MPs' optimal flocculation and aggregation. Even considering exceptionally high concentrations of MPs (2 g/L) that far exceed naturally-occurring concentrations, the BC hydrogel was shown to have elevated MPs flocculation activity (reaching 88.6%: 1.77 g/L). The computation of bioflocculation activity showed high reliability in predicting flocculation performance, unveiling that the BC:MPs ratio and grinding times were the most critical variables modulating flocculation rates. Also, short exposure times (5 min) were sufficient to drive robust particle aggregation. The microporous nature of the hydrogel revealed by electron microscopy is the likely driver of strong MPs bioflocculant activity, far outperforming dispersive commercial bioflocculants like xanthan gum and alginate. This pilot study provides convincing evidence that even BC remainings can be used to produce highly potent and circular bioflocculators of MPs, with prospective application in the wastewater treatment industry.

Original languageEnglish
Article number137719
JournalChemosphere
Volume314
Number of pages11
ISSN0045-6535
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests.Nereida Cordeiro reports financial support was provided by Foundation for Science and Technology. Nereida Cordeiro reports financial support was provided by European Territorial Cooperation Programme PCT-MAC 2014–2020. Marisa Faria reports financial support was provided by Foundation for Science and Technology. Ivana Mendonca reports financial support was provided by Fundação Amadeu Dias.This research was supported by Foundation for Science and Technology-FCT, through CIIMAR-UIDB/04423/2020 and UIDP/04423/2020, and by the European Territorial Cooperation Programme PCT-MAC 2014–2020 through REBECA-CCT (MAC/1.1. B/269) project. Ivana Mendonça acknowledges a research grant financed by Fundação Amadeu Dias under the scope of the programme BYT+, promoted by CIIMAR. Marisa Faria was financially supported by a doctoral grant (BD/6615/2020) from FCT.

Funding Information:
IM, MF and NC contributed to the conception and design of the study. IM, JS and CC executed the experiment. IM, CC and NC analysed, interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. NC and AF made possible the execution of the experiment through providing administrative and financial support, supervising the experiment, and making the critical revisions regarding important intellectual content of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Bacterial cellulose, Biopolymer, Bioremediation, Flocculation, Microplastics

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