Wenfeng Li

With the continuous expansion of urban areas, the treatment of urban sewage is facing significant challenges. Tens of thousands of tons of municipal sludge (MS) are produced annually, which not only occupies substantial land resources but also poses potential environmental threats, thereby complicating wastewater treatment processes. Proper management of MS has thus become a critical issue requiring urgent attention. Meanwhile, water pollution continues to worsen, endangering both ecological systems and human health. MS contains a variety of organic compounds with active functional groups capable of forming strong coordination interactions with various waterborne pollutants. Building on this foundation, we successfully develop a multifunctional adsorbent using MS as the raw material through biomineralization. The synthesized adsorbent shows outstanding performance, exhibiting high adsorption capacity for fluoride (F⁻) and hexavalent uranium (U(VI)) in high-fluorine uranium-containing wastewater, effectively reducing the concentrations of these harmful substances. Additionally, the adsorbent shows strong affinity for the cationic dye methylene blue, making it highly suitable for the treatment of wastewater from the printing and dyeing industries. Notably, the adsorbent also possesses antibacterial properties, demonstrating significant bactericidal activity against Gram-negative E. coli in wastewater. The multifunctional adsorbent not only offers a novel solution to enhancing water quality and safety, but also represents a promising strategy for sustainable wastewater treatment.

As a kind of biomass, the seaweed residue will cause resource waste and environmental pollution if it is discharged as waste at will. As a cheap and easy biomass residue, its reuse has attracted more and more attention, and it has tapped the unexplored potential of renewable biological resources. In this study, we synthesize a carbon aerogel (CA) derived from an algae residue, which is utilized as an electrocatalyst for constructing an electrochemical dopamine (DA) biosensor. Utilizing the heightened disorder of carbon within CAs that was achieved through high-temperature pyrolysis and the augmentation of active sites, CAs show excellent electrocatalytic performance in the detection of DA and can selectively detect DA with a detection limit of 0.033 μM. Furthermore, the DA electrochemical biosensor is also employed to detect real samples with satisfactory reproducibility and stability. This study not only confirms the feasibility of introducing active defects to improve catalytic performance but also extends the application of the algae residue in electrochemical sensors for monitoring various biomolecules.