Pathogen contamination of water has a massive impact on global human health. In particular, viruses pose unique challenges to water treatment techniques due to their small size and presence in water as both individual virions and when absorbed onto larger particles. Low-energy water treatment processes such as media filtration are not capable of completely removing viruses owing to their small size. Hence, less sustainable processes with high chemical or energy consumption such as chemical disinfection, ultraviolet irradiation, and membrane filtration are usually required. To overcome high energy and/or chemical requirements for virus treatment, designs for sustainable fiber filters fabricated from minimally processed natural materials for efficient virus (MS2) and bacteria (E. coli) removal are presented in this work. These filters were created by functionalizing readily accessible natural fibers including cotton, silk, and flax with a simple aqueous extract containing cationic proteins from Moringa oleifera seeds. The proposed filters offer a comprehensive low cost, low energy, and low environmental impact solution for pathogen removal from water with removals of >7log₁₀ (99.99999%) for viruses and bacteria.

水的病原体污染对全球人类健康产生了巨大影响。特别是，病毒对水处理技术提出了独特的挑战，因为它们体积小，并且作为单个病毒粒子存在于水中，并且当被吸收到较大的颗粒上时。介质过滤等低能耗水处理工艺由于体积小，无法完全去除病毒。因此，通常需要化学消毒、紫外线照射和膜过滤等具有高化学或能源消耗的不太可持续的工艺。为了克服病毒处理的高能量和/或化学要求，设计了可持续纤维过滤器，由经过最少加工的天然材料制成，用于高效病毒 (MS2) 和细菌 (大肠杆菌)) 移除在这项工作中提出。这些过滤器是通过使用含有来自辣木种子的阳离子蛋白的简单水性提取物对容易获得的天然纤维（包括棉花、丝绸和亚麻）进行功能化而制成的。所提出的过滤器为从水中去除病原体提供了一种全面的低成本、低能耗和低环境影响的解决方案，病毒和细菌的去除率>7log ₁₀ (99.99999%)。