Photodynamic inactivation of microorganisms in different water matrices: The effect of physicochemical parameters on the treatment outcome

Wastewater (WW) insufficiently treated for the disinfection of microorganisms, including pathogenic ones, is a source of concern and a possible generator of public health problems. Traditional disinfection methods to reduce pathogens concentration (e.g., chlorination, ozonation, UV) are expensive, unsafe, and/or sometimes ineffective, highlighting the need for new disinfection technologies. The promising results of photodynamic inactivation (PDI) treatment to erad-icate microorganisms suggest the efficacy of this treatment to improve WW quality. This work aimed to assess if PDI can be successfully extended to real contexts for the microbial inactivation in WW. For the first time, PDI experiments with 9 different water matrices compositions were performed to inquire about the influence of some of their physico-chemical parameters on the effectiveness of microbial inactivation. Bacterial photoinactivation was tested in freshwa-ter, aquaculture water, and seawater samples, as well as in influents and effluents samples from domestic, industrial, and a mixture of industrial and domestic WW receiving wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Additionally, PDI assays were performed in phosphate-buffered saline isotonic solution (PBS), used as an aqueous comparative matrix. To relate the PDI disinfection efficiency with the physicochemical compositions of the different used water matrices, a series of statistical analysis were performed, in order to support our main conclusions.Overall, the results showed that PDI is an effective and promising alternative to traditionally used WW disinfection methods, with a bacterial reduction of >3.0 log CFU/mL in all the water matrices within the first hour of PDI treat-ment, but also that the physicochemical composition of the aqueous matrices to be PDI-disinfected must be taken into account since they seem to influence the PDI efficacy, namely the pH, with acidic pH conditions seeming to be associated to a better PDI performance in general.

Automated summary

This study aimed to evaluate the applicability of photodynamic inactivation (PDI) in real wastewater contexts for microbial inactivation. The results showed that PDI is an effective and promising disinfection method with a bacterial reduction of >3.0 log CFU/mL within the first hour of treatment. However, the physicochemical composition of water matrices should be considered as it can affect PDI efficacy, especially the pH, with acidic conditions showing better PDI performance.