Occurrence, identification and removal of microplastic particles and fibers in conventional activated sludge process and advanced MBR technology.
By M. Lares, M. C. Ncibi, M. Sillanpää, M. Sillanpää. Water Research, 2018
1,028 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are acting as routes of microplastics (MPs) to the environment, hence the urgent need to examine MPs in wastewaters and different types of sludge through sampling campaigns covering extended periods of time. In this study, the efficiency of a municipal WWTP to remove MPs from wastewater was studied by collecting wastewater and sludge samples once in every two weeks during a 3-month sampling campaign. The WWTP was operated based on the conventional activated sludge (CAS) process and a pilot-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR). The microplastic particles and fibers from both water and sludge samples were identified by using an optical microscope, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) microscope and Raman microscope. Overall, the retention capacity of microplastics in the studied WWTP was found to be 98.3%. Most of the MP fraction was removed before the activated sludge process. The efficiency of an advanced membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology was also examined. The main related finding is that MBR permeate contained 0.4 MP/L in comparison with the final effluent of the CAS process (1.0 MP/L). According to this study, both microplastic fibers and particles are discharged from the WWTP to the aquatic environment.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a1381e38c22e58b66253b6f3c79d273d4a97f94
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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
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Citations in the corpus
- Assessment of microplastics in freshwater systems: A review. (2019, methodology): “During recent years, quantitative analysis methods have been complemented by the qualitative characterization of the microplastic with microscopy-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (μFTIR); Raman spectroscopy combined with microscopy (μRaman); and pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry ”
- Low-Cost Biochar Adsorbents for Water Purification Including Microplastics Removal (2020, background): “Recent studies of microplastics removal have focused on agglomerate formation [22,25] or activated sludge [26].”
- Contributions of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in microplastic pollution research: A review (2020, neutral): “…2018; Ding et al., 2018; Frias et al., 2010; Kuhn, Schaafsma, et al., 2018; Liu, Lu, et al., 2018; Loder et al., 2015; Lourenco et al., 2017) and reflection (Kanhai et al., 2018; Lares et al., 2018; Phuong, Poirier, et al., 2018; Tagg et al., 2015; Vianello et al., 2013; Wang, Peng, et al., 2017).”