UV-C as a Pre-treatment Option against Microalgae in Drinking Water Facilities

Removing microalgae is a crucial step for providing clean drinking water to communities. Pre-treatment of source water can reduce viability of microalgae decreasing costly repairs to treatment membranes. This study aims to gain insight into how UV-C affects the viability of microalgae; this can inform the use of Ultraviolet type C (UV-C) as a pre-treatment. It is hypothesized that UV-C tolerance is connected to thylakoid stack size, cell shape and size and photoprotecting pigments/compound. If this is true, then green algae will be more tolerant to UV-C. The study species represent species of green algae and diatoms that are commonly found in source water and affect treatment membranes. UV-C was effective at reducing viability of all study species, but diatom species were less tolerant perhaps due to smaller thylakoids stacks, smaller size, thinner shape and photoprotection. Future studies should focus on testing more species, DNA repair and UV-C implementation.