Microplastic removal

Plastics products are widely used in various industries due to their low price, durability, light weight, and good ductility with population growth and rapid development of industry. However, only about 9% are recycled and 79% are remained in the environment. These plastic wastes are broken into smaller particles undergoing a series of natural aging processes, including physical abrasion, biodegradation, chemical oxidation, ultraviolet radiation, and photooxidation. The larger plastic pieces will break up into secondary MPs (<5 mm), where the smaller fragments will have their dimensions of about microns.

Microplastics have the properties of hydrophobicity, large specific surface area and strong adsorption capacity to persistent organic pollutants, which enable them to act as vectors of harmful microorganism and chemical pollutants in the environment. Due to the small particle size, aquatic organisms can ingest microplastics via food webs with different nutritional levels. Ingestion of microplastics by aquatic organisms potentially results in the false satiety, digestive difficulty and intestinal abrasion, or indirectly induces the oxidative stress reaction, reduce the growth rate, and cause physiological and reproductive diseases. At present, there is no limit on the content of microplastics in the effluent, and the purpose of removal is to remove as much as possible. How to effectively remove the microplastics in effluent is an urgent problem. Thus, we aim to develop an economical and reusable method for the removal of microplastics from effluent before being discharged.