Sustainable water sterilization by nano-ZnO using anisotropic polysaccharide columns derived from agro-waste stalk

The escalating demand for clean water and proliferation of microbial contamination in water have challenged ecosystems and human health safety. ZnO NPs are widely used as environmental restoration agents, but their efficacy in water decontamination is hindered by low biological toxicity. In order to enhance its sterilization efficiency, we propose a top-down strategy utilizing the unique maze structure of corn stalk pith (CSP) as a germ trapper for ZnO. The in-situ delignified CSP offers abundant active sites for the adsorption of Zn 2+ , exhibiting the typical behaviors of monolayer, physisorption, endothermicity, spontaneity, and randomness. This adsorption behavior exerts an influence on microscopic morphology of the composite column, consequently resulting in alterations to antibacterial properties. The results show that the hybrid column fabricated under the Zn 2+ initial dosage of 1.00 mol/L at 30 h for 40 °C, possesses such optimal features as stacked grain-shaped ZnO NPs of 669.3 mg/g loading amount with adhesion coefficients of 0.73 ∼ 0.86 for bacterial microparticles. Consequently, the assembled bio-filter can eliminate E. coli and S. aureus as high as 99.7 % and 96.5 % respectively, attributed to CSPP labyrinth structure to enhance pathogen capture from water and facilitate ZnO-mediated inactivation. The collective findings emphasize the viability of agro-waste stalks as bio-filters for water purification.