The roles of microbes in the removal and inactivation of viruses in a biological wastewater treatment system

Abstract

The objective of this research is to clarify the mechanism for virus removal in an activated sludge process. The roles of microbes, i.e. bacteria, protozoa and metazoa, which form activated sludge were investigated using poliovirus as a model virus. In a bacteria cultures, the virus concentration decreased in the first one hour after which no further decrease was observed. This phenomenon is explained by the interaction of bacterial flee and virus where virus was removed by reversible adsorption. On the other hand, in the mixed culture of bacteria and protozoa, or of bacteria and metazoa, the virus removal process was observed to proceed in two first-order processes. In the first stage, virus was removed from the liquid phase by adsorption onto the floc, whereas in the second stage, virus is removed by predation of the other microbes, i.e. protozoa or metazoa. Moreover, the floc-forming ability and the feeding manner of the microbes strongly affected the virus removal. Especially, a filter feeder microbe was more effective in virus removal than a detritus feeder microbe. Among the microbes used in the experiments, P. erythrophthalma which had a large mouth and a strong filter-feeding ability as well as a high floc-forming ability showed the most efficient virus removal.