Abstract
Porous carbons are well-known efficient adsorbents for a variety of organic and inorganic pollutants; however, they have difficulty in virus removal. In this study, novel porous carbons (NPCs) (NPC-A, NPC-B, and NPC-C) derived from rice husks were compared with commercially available activated carbons (ACs) for their ability to remove MS2 bacteriophages (MS2) in a batch experiment. NPC-A was produced by the silica removal process. NPC-B was prepared with an additional steam activation applied to NPC-A. NPC-C was obtained with an additional acid rinse applied to NPC-B. The NPCs (particularly NPC-C) exhibited effective removal of up to 5.3 log10 of MS2, which was greater than that of less than 2.7 log10 obtained by other ACs under 10 g/L during the same contact time (60 min). The pore size distribution of the porous carbon adsorbents was found to influence their virus removal performance. The adsorbents with a larger proportion of pores ranging from 200–4500 nm in diameter were able to achieve higher virus removal rates. Thus, NPCs (particularly NPC-C), which had a larger volume of pores ranging from 200–4500 nm in size, demonstrated the potential for use as efficient adsorbents for removing viruses during water purification.
Highlights
30% of the global population (2.1 billion people in 2017) lacks access to safe drinking water [1], and many more live with contaminated water; waterborne diseases are critical issues worldwide, in developing countries
Three novel porous carbons (NPCs) were prepared from the same raw material of rice husks obtained from the Akita prefecture in Japan according to the method of Tabata et al [20]
(4.0 log10 ) and activated carbons (ACs)-D (2.7 log10 ) at the contact time of 60 min. These findings indicate that NPCs ( NPC-C) were able to remove the virus more effectively than other porous carbon adsorbents
Summary
30% of the global population (2.1 billion people in 2017) lacks access to safe drinking water [1], and many more live with contaminated water; waterborne diseases are critical issues worldwide, in developing countries. Enteric viruses (e.g., norovirus and rotavirus) are widely recognized as major causes of acute diarrhea [4]. These viruses have been frequently found in water sources, including surface water and groundwater [5,6,7,8,9]. There is a need for the development of simple, efficient, and affordable POU technologies for virus removal to provide safe water in developing countries
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