This study aims to examine the throughput of nanoparticles through a Cladophora cellulose based virus removal filter. The effect of Brownian motion and flow velocity on the retention of 5 nm gold nanoparticles, 12.8 nm dextran nanoparticles and 28 nm ΦX174 bacteriophages was examined through MATLAB simulations and filtration experiments. Modeling of Brownian motion at different flow velocities was performed in MATLAB by solving the Langevin equation for particle position and velocity for all three types of particles. The motion of all three particle types was shown to be constrained at local flow velocities of 1∙10-2 m/s or greater. The constraint was greatest for ΦX174 bacteriophages, followed by dextran particles and then gold particles as a result of particle diameter. To verify the effect experimentally, virus removal filters were prepared with a peak pore width of 23 nm. Filtration experiments were performed at different flux values where gold and dextran particles did not exhibit any difference in retention between fluxes. However, a significant amount of gold and dextran particles were removed by the filter despite being smaller than the measured pore size. A decrease in retention with filtrated volume was observed for both particle types. Filtration of ΦX174 bacteriophages exhibited a difference in retention at different fluxes, where all bacteriophages where removed at a higher flux. The results from both simulations and experiments suggest that the retentive mechanism in filtering is more complex than what can be described only by size exclusion sieving, Brownian diffusion and hydrodynamic constraint of particles.