Novel amyloid-like porous lysozyme skeletons as “green” superadsorbent presenting ultrahigh capacity and rapid sequestration towards hazardous Congo red

Finding routes to processing the water-soluble proteins into well-organized materials with rational structures holds a massive challenge for adsorption-based environmental remediation. Herein, one strategy to answer this challenge is to utilize the enhanced amyloidal denaturation protocol to achieve phase transition of egg-white lysozyme with the generation of a novel biosorbent with superadsorption ability for Congo red (CR) removal, namely porous lysozyme skeletons. The as-prepared superadsorbent exhibits three-dimensional skeletal geomorphology and highly porous structures (240.2 m2/g), both beneficial for adsorption. As expected, this amyloidal adsorbent shows remarkable uptake performances for CR with rapid kinetics (≤20 min) and an ultrahigh capacity of 2.00 × 103 mg/g in the form of multilayer adsorption, as well as the removal adaptability over wide ranges of solution chemistry variation. Additionally, a remarkable adsorption selectivity towards CR in the presence of another anionic/cationic dyes and robust recyclability after undergoing twenty successive cycles are discerned. More importantly, the resultant lysozyme skeletons can effectively realize immediate decoloration flowing across homemade column filtration. The scavenging mechanisms are concluded as the cooperation of the electrostatic attraction, hydrophobic interaction, H-bonding, π-π stacking, β-sheet affinity, and pore-filling effect. Overall, this “green” superadsorbent can be deemed as an attractive project for alleviating dyestuff pollution.