Water Self-Purification with Zero External Consumption by Livestock Manure Resource Utilization

Abstract

Improper disposal of waste biomass and an increasing number of emerging contaminants (ECs) in water environment are universal threats to the global environment. Here, we creatively propose a sustainable strategy for the direct resource transformation of livestock manure (LM) into an innovative catalyst (Fe-CCM) for water self-purification with zero external consumption. ECs can be rapidly degraded in this self-purification system at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure, without any external oxidants or energy input, accompanied by H₂O and dissolved oxygen (DO) activation. The performance of the self-purification system is not affected by various types of salinity in the wastewater, and the corresponding second-order kinetic constant is improved 7 times. The enhanced water self-purification mechanism reveales that intermolecular forces between anions and pollutants reinforce electron exchange between pollutants and metal sites on the catalyst, further inducing the utilization of the intrinsic energy of contaminants, H₂O, and DO through the interfacial reaction. This work provides new insights into the rapid removal of ECs in complicated water systems with zero external consumption and is expected to advance the resource utilization of livestock waste.

Keywords: high salinity; livestock manure treatment; low consumption; oxygen activation; water self-purification.