Design and Validation of a Novel Continuous-Flow UV–Ozone–Photocatalytic Bio- Decontaminating Reactor for Effective Microbial Decontamination

The indicators of emerging pollutants (EP’s) and emerging microbial contaminants (EMC’s) highlights the urgent need for transformative water treatment technologies. To effectively address EP's and EMC’s, treatment strategies must evolve beyond conventional approaches. In this study, we report the design, development, prototyping and validation of a continuous flow hybrid bio reactor that synergistically integrates ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, ozone generated from ambient air, and a photocatalytic ZnO/PVDF/RGO membrane system for advanced bio decontamination and filtration. The present work with continues flow hybrid bio-decontamination reactor (CHBR) is an advancement work from our earlier small volume batch processing bio-decontaminating reactor prototype system that attained technology readiness level 4 (TRL-4). In this work a continues flow bio-decontamination reactor system (CHBR) is validated in a laboratory environment (TRL-4). An advanced low volume continuous flow configuration has now been created to enable scalable, energy-efficient, and reliable bio decontamination performance. Evaluations against Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) demonstrated complete microbial inactivation. The results validate the feasibility of the hybrid bio reactor as a low-cost, energy-efficient, and modular platform for decentralized water treatment. This technology holds promise for deployment in resource constrained settings, with potential applications in decontamination of small waterbodies and when upscaled can be implemented to community scale sanitation requirements.