Ozone is rapidly becoming an integral part of many water and wastewater treatment trains, thanks to its high efficacy at inactivating pathogens and mitigating trace organic contaminants. Although ozone possesses potent antimicrobial activity, several barriers remain to fully exploit its potential as a disinfectant. First, the kinetics and mechanisms of ozone-inactivation of waterborne pathogens remain poorly understood. Second, the performance of ozone during water and wastewater treatment is difficult to monitor, due to a lack of real-time methods to assess pathogen infectivity. In this study, we investigated the fate of waterborne viruses during water treatment by ozone. We first developed an experimental system to accurately measure virus inactivation at very low ozone exposures. The inactivation rate constants were very high (~ 106 M-1s-1) and within an order of magnitude for all viruses considered, independent of their composition or structure. Furthermore, the loss of infectivity coincided with loss of genome functionality, indicating that genome degradation is the main mechanism causing inactivation. Finally, we explored the use of proxies, which are easy to measure and correlate with virus inactivation, to circumvent the challenges associated with monitoring virus infectivity in real-time and assessing the ozone exposure in wastewaters. Proxies considered were the abatement of UV254 and of carbamazepine (CBZ), a ubiquitous organic micropollutant with a similar abatement rate constant as human viruses. Both proxies were well-correlated with virus inactivation, and their applicability to virus inactivation monitoring was confirmed in a pilot-scale drinking water treatment setup. Overall, this study confirms that ozone has a high potential to mitigate waterborne viruses in water and wastewater, and provides tools to monitor ozone treatment performance.

Understanding and monitoring the decay of waterborne viruses during ozonation

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.