Lignocellulolytic fungi to tailor hydrophobic microstructures of biochar for efficient and selective removal of...

The co-occurrence of multiple classes of emerging contaminants (ECs) in water bodies, such as phenolic compounds (PCs), extracellular DNA (eDNA), and nanoscale plastics (PSNP), complicates their simultaneous removal due to divergent physicochemical properties. A fungus (Ganoderma lucidum)-pretreated biochar (FTBC) is engineered to address this challenge. Fungal selective delignification of basswood enriched cellulose, which, upon pyrolysis, directed the formation of a hydrophobic and hierarchically porous biochar with short-range graphitic order. Compared to pristine biochar (PBC), FTBC exhibited markedly enhanced and faster adsorption across all tested ECs. A key mechanistic finding was the shift in the dominant adsorption mechanism: from defect-mediated π-π EDA interactions in PBC to crystallinity-driven hydrophobic interactions in FTBC. This shift underpinned the superior selectivity of FTBC, as evidenced by the strong correlation between the adsorption capacities for PCs and their hydrophobicity (XLogP). Systematic desorption experiments and theoretical calculations confirmed that ECs preferentially accumulate on the crystalline graphene domains of FTBC. This work achieves fungal-mediated topological control over biomass conversion for one-step synthesis of high-performance biochar, offering fundamental insights into carbon interface design for selective adsorption and establishing a sustainable biocatalytic and pyrolysis route for water remediation.