Since water availability is in constant decline, it is crucial to develop new, environmentally friendly technologies for successful water decontamination, which would help provide clean water and improved environmental safety. This is why this has been the focus of our work, where we have developed a state-of-the-art technology that combines plasma with supercavitation (Primc et al., 2023). The initial experiments with the combined plasma-supercavitation device yielded great results (Filipić et al. 2023), showing that it is worthwhile to further explore its potential and fill in the knowledge gaps to improve water decontamination and enable the technology to be used outside the laboratory. One of the aspects that should be investigated is the inactivation of enteric viruses. Since working with them presents many challenges, they are often replaced with surrogate viruses. Therefore, the first experiments with the combined device were performed with bacteriophage MS2. Since different surrogates may respond differently to treatment with different technologies, it is best to evaluate the inactivation of more than one surrogate with the same technology. This would allow determination of the inactivation range of the technology as well as its inactivation potential against enteric viruses. In addition to viruses, waterborne bacteria can also cause problems so the evaluation of their inactivation would also be of interest.

Plasma treatments of water are generally not performed under the same parameters as other water treatments such as UV or ozonation. Therefore, it is difficult to compare or combine them directly. Our combined device allows easy comparison and combination with other technologies, another aspect that should be explored as it could lead to improved water decontamination. Furthermore, waters used for various purposes may contain different amounts of organic material and pollutants. So, to evaluate the inactivation potential of the technology for different waters, this should also be investigated.
Therefore, the proposed project aims to address the various important aspects of water decontamination by a breakthrough combination of plasma and supercavitation. The main objectives of the proposed project include:

1. Evaluation of inactivation of enteric viruses, such as human norovirus (HuNoV), and their animal surrogates, such as murine norovirus (MNV) and Tulane virus (TV) (WP1 + WP3);
2. Comparison of virus inactivation with the combined plasma-supercavitation device with other technologies such as UV irradiation, ozonation, chlorination or H₂O₂ (WP1 + WP3);
3. Determination of virus inactivation after coupling the combined plasma-supercavitation device with other technologies (WP1 + WP3);
4. Investigation of virus inactivation with the combined plasma-supercavitation device in water matrices with different amount of organic material (WP2 + WP3);
5. Preliminary evaluation of the inactivation potential of the combined device against bacteria present in water (WP4).

References

Filipić, Arijana, Dobnik, David, Gutiérrez-Aguirre, Ion, Ravnikar, Maja, Košir, Tamara, Baebler, Špela, Štern, Alja, Žegura, Bojana, Petkovšek, Martin, Dular, Matevž, Mozetič, Miran, Zaplotnik, Rok, Primc, Gregor. Cold plasma within a stable supercavitation bubble – a breakthrough technology for efficient inactivation of viruses in water. Environment international. [Print ed.]. 2023, vol. 182, DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2023.108285.

Primc, Gregor, Zaplotnik, Rok, Mozetič, Miran, Filipić, Arijana, Gutiérrez-Aguirre, Ion, Dobnik, David, Dular, Matevž, Petkovšek, Martin. Method and device for disinfection of liquid : United States Patent US 11,807,555 B2, 2023-11-07. Alexandria: United States Patent and Trademark Office, 2023. [15] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/072801332/publication/US11807555B2?q=US11807555B2.