Credibility of polymeric and ceramic membrane filtration in the removal of bacteria and virus from water: A review

The prevalence of many waterborne diseases and the increased mortality rate starting from children to adult persons rises the need to purify water before consumption. Owing to the number of advantages associated with membrane filtration technologies, they are widely being implemented across the world for the production of pathogen free water. This article hence focuses on numerous such examples of using membrane technology in the production of drinking water. Membranes are even being coated with various materials to enhance their surface properties such as electrostatic and hydrophobic attraction capacity to aid for such separation. Various metal oxide coatings are seen to be gaining importance now-a-days and also, articles citing the use of silver coating are very large in number, owing to the excellent antipathogenic property shown by various silver compounds. It needs mention that examples have also been cited in this article where virus concentration was carried out with a purpose of producing different vaccines, virus adsorption in membrane and its subsequent elution (VIRADEL) being the most discussed one. In addition to these, description about the virus and bacteria quantification techniques are also mentioned in this article. The elaborated study of all these processes and the derived future prospects regarding the production of pathogen free water will certainly be helpful for the researchers working in this field, irrespective of the beginners or the experienced ones, to direct their research more innovatively.