Make it clean, make it safe: A review on virus elimination via adsorption

Recently, the potential dangers of viral infection transmission through water and air have become the focus of worldwide attention, via the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The occurrence of large-scale outbreaks of dangerous infections caused by unknown pathogens and the isolation of new pandemic strains require the development of improved methods of viruses’ inactivation. Viruses are not stable self-sustaining living organisms and are rapidly inactivated on isolated surfaces. However, water resources and air can participate in the pathogens’ diffusion, stabilization, and transmission. Viruses inactivation and elimination by adsorption are relevant since they can represent an effective and low-cost method to treat fluids, and hence limit the spread of pathogen agents. This review analyzed the interaction between viruses and carbon-based, oxide-based, porous materials and biological materials (e.g., sulfated polysaccharides and cyclodextrins). It will be shown that these adsorbents can play a relevant role in the viruses removal where water and air purification mostly occurring via electrostatic interactions. However, a clear systematic vision of the correlation between the surface potential and the adsorption capacity of the different filters is still lacking and should be provided to achieve a better comprehension of the global phenomenon. The rationalization of the adsorption capacity may be achieved through a proper physico-chemical characterization of new adsorbents, including molecular modeling and simulations, also considering the adsorption of virus-like particles on their surface. As a most timely perspective, the results on this review present potential solutions to investigate coronaviruses and specifically SARS-CoV-2, responsible of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose spread can be limited by the efficient disinfection and purification of closed-spaces air and urban waters.