Abstract
Access to drinking water is one of the greatest global challenges today. In this study, the virus removal properties of mille‐feuille nanocellulose‐based filter papers of varying thicknesses from simulated waste water (SWW) matrix are evaluated for drinking water purification applications. Filtrations of standard SWW dispersions at various total suspended solid (TSS) content are performed, including spiking tests with 30 nm surrogate latex particles and 28 nm ΦX174 bacteriophages. Filter papers of thicknesses 9 and 29 µm are used, and the filtrations are performed at two different operational pressures, i.e., 1 and 3 bar. The presented data using SWW matrix show, for the first time, that a filter paper made from 100% nanocellulose has the capacity to efficiently remove even the smallest viruses, i.e., up to 99.9980–99.9995% efficiency, at industrially relevant flow rates, i.e., 60–500 L m−2 h−1, and low fouling, i.e., V max > 103–104 L m−2. The filter paper presented in this work shows great promise for the development of robust, affordable, and sustainable water purification systems.
Highlights
Access to drinking water is one of the greatest global challenges today
The separation efficiency of the mille-feuille filter was verified for surrogate nanoparticles, e.g., gold nanoparticles or fluorophore-labeled latex nanobeads,[41,42,43] and real viruses, e.g., influenza virus, i.e., swine influenza A virus (100 nm);[41] retrovirus, i.e., murine leukemia virus (100 nm);[44] and parvovirus, i.e., minute virus of mice (20 nm).[40]
The properties of the mille-feuille filter paper are evaluated for water treatment applications for the first time
Summary
The advances in nanocellulose science allow today for costefficient production of this material.[39] Recently, a highly costefficient virus removal filter paper, aka mille-feuille filter paper, was described for applications in biotechnology.[40,41] It is produced by traditional paper-making processing, which contrasts starkly from the membrane technology relying on phase inversion. This nonwoven filter paper, made from 100% cellulose nanofibers, features a stratified internal architecture, consisting of numerous cellulose nanofiber sheets—its name is “mille-feuille” (or thousand leaves) filter paper. Representative heat flow curves from CP-DSC measurements of the nanocellulose filter papers can be found in Figure S1 in the Supporting Information
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