Synergistic integration of adsorption and antibacterial activity in a quaternized cyclodextrin composite for water reclamation.

Traditional cyclodextrin-based synthetic materials fail to simultaneously address interrelated challenges, including adsorption and bacterial contamination, which restricted treatment efficiency in wastewater treatment (WWT). In this study, a quaternized cyclodextrin composite (CC-GTA) was synthesized via a two-step grafting method. The physicochemical structure of CC-GTA was comprehensively characterized to confirm the successful fabrication and investigate the characteristics. The CC-GTA exhibited excellent adsorption performance for bisphenol A (218.12 mg/g) via hydrophobic inclusion complexation and methyl orange (384.09 mg/g) by electrostatic attraction, respectively. Moreover, the super-hydrophilic surface (water contact angle = 13.9°) and abundant pore structure contributed to an 84% removal of bovine serum albumin. Moreover, CC-GTA demonstrated achieving antibacterial properties for Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus with a maximum antibacterial efficiency of 98%, and still achieved an antibacterial efficiency of 95% in real wastewater. The antibacterial mechanism of CC-GTA was verified to involve electrostatic adhesion of bacterial cells and disruption of the cell membranes, causing cytoplasmic leakage and cell death. In summary, the synthesized eco-friendly composite CC-GTA integrated the dual functionalities of efficient adsorption and antibacterial activity, which provided a reliable material solution and technological pathway and showed great application potential in large-scale industrial for advanced WWT.