Engineering Commons^™

Mechanisms Of Virus Mitigation And Suitability Of Bacteriophages As Surrogates In Drinking Water Treatment By Iron Electrocoagulation, Joe Heffron, Brad Mcdermid, Emily Maher, Patrick J. Mcnamara, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Emerging water treatment technologies using ferrous and zero-valent iron show promising virus mitigation by both inactivation and adsorption. In this study, iron electrocoagulation was investigated for virus mitigation in drinking water via bench-scale batch experiments. Relative contributions of physical removal and inactivation, as determined by recovery via pH 9.5 beef broth elution, were investigated for three mammalian viruses (adenovirus, echovirus, and feline calicivirus) and four bacteriophage surrogates (fr, MS2, P22, and ΦX174). Though no one bacteriophage exactly represented mitigation of the mammalian viruses in all water matrices, bacteriophage ΦX174 was the only surrogate that showed overall removal comparable to that …