Microplastics degradation stimulated by in-situ bioelectric field in agricultural soils

Bioelectric field is a stimulated force to degrade xenobiotic pollutants in soils. However, the effect of bioelectric field on microplastics (MPs) aging is unclear. The degradation behavior of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyethylene (PE) and polylactic acid (PLA) was investigated in an agricultural soil microbial electrochemical system in which bioelectric field was generated in-situ by native microbes. Based on the density function theory, the energy gaps between the highest and the lowest occupied molecular orbitals of the three polymers with periodic structure were 4.20, 7.24 and 10.09 eV respectively, and further decreased under the electric field, indicating the higher hydrolysis potential of PLA. Meanwhile, the mass loss of PLA in the closed-circuit group (CC) was the highest on day 120, reaching 8.94%, which was 3.01-3.54 times of that without bioelectric field stimulation. This was mainly due to the enrichment of plastic-degrading bacteria and a robust co-occurrence network as the deterministic assembly process, e.g., the abundance of potential plastic-degrading bacteria on the surface of PLA and PVC in the CC increased by 1.92 and 1.30 times, respectively, compared to the open-circuit group. In terms of functional genes, the xenobiotic biodegradation and metabolism capacity of plasticsphere in the CC were stronger than that in soil, and determined by the bioaccessibility of soil nitrogen and carbon. Overall, this study explored the promoting effect of bioelectric field on the degradation of MPs and reveled the mechanism from quantum chemical calculations and microbial community analysis, which provides a novel perception to the in-situ degradation of MPs.