Zhang, Qiming; Hu, Jiajun; Yang, Chen; Guo, Wenshan; Liu, Jiaxiang; Liu, Nan; Wang, Liang; Ngo, Huu Hao; Li, Jixiang

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL

2025, ,

Zhang, Qiming; Hu, Jiajun; Yang, Chen; Guo, Wenshan; Liu, Jiaxiang; Liu, Nan; Wang, Liang; Ngo, Huu Hao; Li, Jixiang

In this study, a teamed boronate affinity (TBA) strategy was employed to prepare a novel low pKa glycoprotein magnetic molecularly imprinted polymer (MMIP-TBA) with 3-Aminophenylboronic acid and 1,6-hexanediamine as precursors for improving the performance of sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) under physiological conditions (pH = 7.4). The effects of MMIP-TBA on pollutants removal, filter resistance improvement and synergistic glycoprotein recovery were comprehensively investigated in SBRs, and the mechanisms were further explained by density functional theory (DFT) and microbial community analysis. The adsorption tests indicated that the MMIP-TBA retained high adsorption capacity (201 mg & sdot;g- 1), excellent specificity (imprinting factor, IF = 5.74) on ovalbumin, and showed the desired selectivity (selectivity factor, SFBSA = 4.52, SFLyz = 2.44, SFBHb = 1.86) on competing proteins. Also, the MMIP-TBA showed a remarkable recovery ability (75 mg & sdot;g- 1) of glycoprotein-type substances in soluble microbial products (SMPs) derived from SBRs. Moreover, the adsorption process is a monolayer chemical adsorption and is thermodynamically spontaneous (triangle G Theta = -13.58 kJ & sdot;mol- 1). DFT calculations elucidated that the B-N bond was responsible for specific adsorption of TBA with 1.2-cis diol. The microbial community analysis suggested that the MMIP-TBA inhibited the colonization of biofouling bacteria thereby reducing the SMP production. Consequently, the specific filtration resistance was reduced by 30.6 % with slight improvement on pollutants removal. Also, the glycoprotein could be synergistically recovered. The improvement of SBRs performance by MMIP-TBA may be aroused by the specific adsorption and microbial regulation in SBRs. These findings provided that the MMIP-TBA had great potential in improving performance for biological systems under physiological conditions.