Inactivation of various bacteriophages by different ultraviolet technologies: Development of a reliable virus indicator system for water reuse

There is an urgent need to identify more reliable indicator systems for human pathogenic viruses in water reuse practice. In this study, we determined the response of different bacteriophages representing various bacteriophage groups to different ultraviolet (UV) technologies in real wastewater in order to identify more reliable bacteriophage indicator systems for UV disinfection in wastewater. Bacteriophage phi X174, PRD1, and MS2 in two different real wastewaters were irradiated with several doses of both low pressure (LP) and medium pressure (MP) UV irradiation through bench-scale UV collimated apparatus. The inactivation rate of fX174 by both LP and MP UV was rapid and reached similar to 4 log(10) within a UV dose of 20 mJ/cm(2). However, the inactivation rates of bacteriophage PRD1 and MS2 were much slower than the one for phi X174 and only similar to 1 log(10) inactivation was achieved by the same UV dose of 20 mJ/cm(2). Overall, the results of this study suggest that bacteriophage MS2 could be a reliable indicator for human pathogenic viruses for both LP and MP UV disinfection in wastewater treatment processes and water reuse practice.