title: Reverse osmosis integrity monitoring in water reuse: The challenge to verify virus removal - A review.
abstract: A reverse osmosis (RO) process is often included in the treatment train to produce high quality reuse water from treated effluent for potable purposes because of its high removal efficiency for salinity and many inorganic and organic contaminants, and importantly, it also provides an excellent barrier for pathogens. In order to ensure the continued protection of public health from pathogen contamination, monitoring RO process integrity is necessary. Due to their small sizes, viruses are the most difficult class of pathogens to be removed in physical separation processes and therefore often considered the most challenging pathogen to monitor. To-date, there is a gap between the current log credit assigned to this process (determined by integrity testing approved by regulators) and its actual log removal capability as proven in a variety of laboratory and pilot studies. Hence, there is a challenge to establish a methodology that more closely links to the theoretical performance. In this review, after introducing the notion of risk management in water reuse, we provide an overview of existing and potentially new RO integrity monitoring techniques, highlight their strengths and drawbacks, and debate their applicability to full-scale treatment plants, which open to future research opportunities.
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. Electronic address: m.pype@awmc.uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Marie-Laure
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Pype
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; Bligh Tanner Fortitude Valley, QLD 4006, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Lawrence
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Jurg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona 08010, Spain; Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Girona 17003, Spain.
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gernjak
mesh_terms: D005374:Filtration; D009995:Osmosis; D014867:Water; D018508:Water Purification; D060753:Water Quality
chemical_list: D014867:Water
keywords: Membrane integrity; Monitoring techniques; Risk management; Virus removal; Water reuse