Spirulina-based carbon materials as adsorbents for drinking water taste and odor control: Removal efficiency and assessment of cyto-genotoxic effects

The sensory quality of drinking water, and particularly its taste and odor (T&O) is a key determinant of consumer acceptability, as consumers evaluate water by their senses. Some of the conventional treatment processes to control compounds which impart unpleasant T&O have limitations because of their low efficiency and/or high costs. Therefore, there is a great need to develop an effective process for removing T&O compounds without secondary concerns. The primary objective of this study was to assess for the first time the effectiveness of spirulina-based carbon materials in removing geosmin (GSM) and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) from water, two commonly occurring natural T&O compounds. The efficiency of the materials to remove environmentally relevant concentrations of GSM and 2-MIB (ng L-1) from ultrapure and raw water was investigated using a sensitive headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC/MS) method. Moreover, the genotoxic and cytotoxic effects of the spirulina-based materials were assessed for the first time to evaluate their safety and their potential in the treatment of water for human consumption. Based on the results, spirulina-based materials were found to be promising for drinking water treatment applications, as they did not exert geno-cytotoxic effects on human cells, while presenting high efficiency in removing GSM and 2-MIB from water.