Adsorption of MS2 on oxide nanoparticles affects chlorine disinfection and solar inactivation

Adsorption on colloidal particles is one of the environmental processes affecting fate, transport, viability or reproducibility of viruses. This work studied colloidal interactions (adsorption kinetics and isotherms) between different oxide nanoparticles (NPs) (i.e., TiO₂, NiO, ZnO, SiO₂, and Al₂O₃) and bacteriophage, MS2. The results shows that that all oxide NPs exhibited strong adsorption capacity for MS2, except SiO₂ NPs, which is supported by the extended Derjaguin and Landau, Verwey and Overbeek (EDLVO) theory. Moreover, the implication of such colloidal interactions on water disinfection is manifested by the observations that the presence of TiO₂ and ZnO NPs could enhance MS2 inactivation under solar irradiation, whereas NiO and SiO₂ decreased MS2 inactivation. By contrast, all of these oxide NPs were found to mitigate chlorine disinfection against MS2 to different extent, and the shielding effect was probably caused by reduced free chlorine and free MS2 in the solution due to sorption onto NPs. Clearly, there is a pressing need to further understand colloidal interactions between engineered NPs and viruses in water to better improve the current water treatment processes and to develop novel nanomaterials for water disinfection.