Microbial characterizations of water using tea polyphenols as a disinfectant for effluent treatment after the ultrafiltration process

Abstract

The microbial characteristics of water treated by tea polyphenols after the ultrafiltration process were studied based on the continuous disinfection performance of tea polyphenols. Metagenomics was carried out to investigate the microbial community distribution, functional characteristics, and variations after disinfection, to reveal the disinfection principle of tea polyphenols, and to provide the theoretical basis for using tea polyphenols as a disinfectant to better control the growth of microorganisms. The analysis of microbial diversity and community structure showed that the microbial diversity in water was significantly reduced after disinfection with tea polyphenols. The results of hierarchical clustering analysis showed that microbial metabolism, environmental information processing, and functional modules in genetic information processing were significantly inhibited after disinfection treatment using tea polyphenols. The tea polyphenols inhibit the growth and reproduction of microorganisms by selection on the microorganisms in the water, thus achieving the effect of bacterial inhibition.

Current understanding on antibacterial mechanisms and research progress of tea polyphenols as a supplementary disinfectant for drinking water

“…Although the concentration of microorganisms in the UF effluent is low, it is still necessary to add disinfectants to avoid secondary contamination of drinking water in the pipe network. Wei et al (2021) used an UF membrane with a pore size of 0.01 μm to explore the sterilizing effect of tea polyphenols at different concentrations on UF effluent. The results showed that tea polyphenols below 5.0 mg/L could not contain the bacterial concentration within the UF effluent at below 100 CFU/mL over 48 h. Therefore, in order to retain the lower dosage as far as possible, the optimal dosage for tea polyphenols as a disinfectant for UF effluent is 5.0 mg/L and the chromaticity of the effluent is 5.…”

“…All indicators meet the requirements of the Drinking Water Sanitation Standard GB5749-2006 (Figure 4). To explore changes in the microbial community structure in water after UF-tea polyphenol disinfection, Wei et al (2021) used high-throughput sequencing to perform metagenomics analysis of disinfected water. The results showed that the proportion of Janthinobacterium that produce metabolites such as Violacein with antibacterial and antiviral activity increased after tea polyphenol disinfection.…”