Harper Rachel, Moody Suzy Clare
School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy, and Chemistry, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE, UK.
J Fungi (Basel). 2023 Jun 13;9(6):661. doi: 10.3390/jof9060661.
Textile waste contributes to the pollution of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. While natural textile fibres are known to be biodegraded by microbes, the vast majority of textiles now contain a mixture of processed plant-derived polymers and synthetic materials generated from petroleum and are commonly dyed with azo dyes. This presents a complex recycling problem as the separation of threads and removal of dye are challenging and costly. As a result, the majority of textile waste is sent to landfill or incinerated. This project sought to assess the potential of fungal bioremediation of textile-based dye as a step towards sustainable and environmentally-friendly means of disposal of textile waste. Successful development of an agar-independent microcosm enabled the assessment of the ability of two fungal species to grow on a range of textiles containing an increasing percentage of elastane. The white rot fungus was shown to grow well on semi-synthetic textiles, and for the first time, bioremediation of dye from textiles was demonstrated. Volatile analysis enabled preliminary assessment of the safety profile of this process and showed that industrial scale-up may require consideration of volatile capture in the design process. This study is the first to address the potential of fungi as bioremediation agents for solid textile waste, and the results suggest this is an avenue worthy of further exploration.
纺织废料会对陆地和水生生态系统造成污染。虽然天然纺织纤维已知可被微生物生物降解，但现在绝大多数纺织品都含有加工过的植物衍生聚合物与石油衍生合成材料的混合物，并且通常用偶氮染料染色。这带来了一个复杂的回收问题，因为分离纱线和去除染料具有挑战性且成本高昂。因此，大部分纺织废料被送去填埋或焚烧。该项目旨在评估真菌对纺织染料进行生物修复的潜力，作为迈向可持续且环保的纺织废料处理方式的一步。一种不依赖琼脂的微观世界的成功开发，使得能够评估两种真菌在一系列含有比例不断增加的氨纶的纺织品上生长的能力。白腐真菌被证明能在半合成纺织品上良好生长，并且首次展示了从纺织品中对染料进行生物修复。挥发性分析能够对该过程的安全性进行初步评估，结果表明在设计过程中进行工业规模扩大时可能需要考虑挥发性物质的捕获。这项研究首次探讨了真菌作为固体纺织废料生物修复剂的潜力，结果表明这是一个值得进一步探索的途径。
