Nanofibrils in 3D aligned channel arrays with synergistic effect of Ag/NPs for rapid and highly efficient electric field disinfection

The disinfection of waterborne pathogens from drinking water is extremely important for human health. Although countless efforts have been devoted for drinking water inactivation, challenges still exist in terms of relative high energy consumption and complicated to implement and maintain. Here, silver nanoparticles anchoring wood carbon (Ag NPs/WC) membrane is developed as cost-effective, high flux, scalable filter for highly efficient electric field disinfection of water. Under electric field of 4 V voltage, the designed membrane achieved more than 5 log (99.999%) disinfection performance for different model bacteria, including Escherichia coli (E. coli), Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis), Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimirium (S. Typhimurium) and Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) with a high flux of 3.8 × 103 L m−2 h−1, extremely low energy consumption of 2 J L−1 m−2 and fantastic durability (7 days). The high disinfection performance of Ag NPs/WC membrane is attributed to the synergistic disinfection of carbon nanofibrils, Ag nanoparticles as well as the low tortuous structure of the channels in wood carbon. The Ag NPs/WC membrane presents a promising strategy for point-of-use drinking water electric field disinfection treatment.