Membrane Distillation Provides a Dual Barrier for Coronavirus and Bacteriophage Removal

Mukta Hardikar; Luisa A Ikner; Varinia Felix; Luke K Presson; Andrew B Rabe; Kerri L Hickenbottom; Andrea Achilli

doi:10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00483

Membrane Distillation Provides a Dual Barrier for Coronavirus and Bacteriophage Removal

Environ Sci Technol Lett. 2021 Jul 14;8(8):713-718. doi: 10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00483. eCollection 2021 Jan 10.

Authors

Mukta Hardikar^{1

2}, Luisa A Ikner^{2

3}, Varinia Felix^{1

2}, Luke K Presson^{1

2}, Andrew B Rabe^{2

3}, Kerri L Hickenbottom^{1

2}, Andrea Achilli^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, United States.
² Water and Energy Sustainable Technology (WEST) Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85745, United States.
³ Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, United States.

PMID: 37566318
DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00483

Abstract

The persistence of pathogenic microorganisms in treated wastewater effluent makes disinfection crucial to achieve wastewater reuse. Membrane processes such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis (RO) have shown promising results for virus and other contaminant removal from treated wastewater effluents for reuse application. However, RO produces a concentrate stream which contains high concentrations of pathogens and contaminants that often requires treatment and volume reduction before disposal. Membrane distillation (MD) is a treatment process that can reduce RO concentrate volume while augmenting the potable water supply. MD is also a dual barrier approach for virus removal as it operates at a high temperature and permeates only the vapor phase through the membrane interface. The effects of temperature on viable virus concentration and membrane rejection of viruses in MD are investigated in this study using two nonenveloped phages frequently used as enteric virus surrogates (MS2 and PhiX174) and an enveloped pathogenic virus (HCoV-229E). At typical MD operating temperatures (greater than 65 °C), viable concentrations of all three viruses were reduced by thermal inactivation by more than 6-log₁₀ for MS2 and PhiX174 and more than 3-log₁₀ for HCoV-229E. Also, membrane rejection was greater than 6-log₁₀ for MS2 and PhiX174 and greater than 2.5-log₁₀ for HCoV-229E.