Trans-membrane piezoelectric activation of peroxymonosulfate for effective control of waterborne antibiotic resistance dissemination

• Published in: npj clean water 2024-07, Vol.7 (1), p.70-9, Article 70
• Main Authors: Yu, Yang, Liu, Lianyu, Xie, Yiqiao, Huang, Wei, Liu, Hai, Liu, Xiaotu, Chen, Da
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 639/166/898; 704/172/169/896; Antibiotic resistance; Antibiotics; Aquatic Pollution; Deactivation; Drug resistance; Earth and Environmental Science; Effectiveness; Environment; Hydroxyl radicals; Inactivation; Membrane filtration; Membrane processes; Membranes; Nanotechnology; Piezoelectricity; Reactive oxygen species; Risk management; Singlet oxygen; Strategy; Transcription activation; Waste Water Technology; Water Industry/Water Technologies; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Water Quality/Water Pollution; Water treatment
• ISSN: 2059-7037; 2059-7037
• DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00351-4

Increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) constitutes an emerging water safety issue globally. However, the effectiveness of current water treatment techniques in the control of ARGs dissemination remains controversial. Here, we develop a dual-zone strategy based on piezoelectric membrane filtration to efficiently eliminate waterborne antibiotic resistance. Following complete ARB inactivation and effective ARGs reduction in the retentate near the membrane surface (zone 1), a subsequent trans-membrane process (zone 2) further promotes ARGs elimination in the permeate, due to boosted interactions between ARGs and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated from piezoelectric peroxymonosulfate activation and minimized ROS competition from inactivated ARB within piezocatalytic channels. The abundance of ARGs was largely reduced to ~1.0 × 10 3 copies·mL −1 in the permeate from ~5.0 × 10 6 copies·mL −1 in the feed solution. The singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ) is demonstrated to be primarily responsible for ARB inactivation, while 1 O 2 , hydroxyl radical (•OH), sulfate radical (SO 4 ·− ) and superoxide radical ( · O 2 − ) can all participate in ARGs degradation. Our work demonstrates that the piezoelectric membrane-based dual-zone strategy has great potential to control the risk of ARGs dissemination.