Optical monitoring of microplastics filtrated from wastewater sludge and suspended in ethanol
Asamoah, Benjamin O.; Salmi, Pauliina; Räty, Jukka; Ryymin, Kalle; Talvitie, Julia; Karjalainen, Anna K.; Kukkonen, Jussi V. K.; Roussey, Matthieu; Peiponen, Kai-Erik (2021-03-11)
Asamoah, B.O.; Salmi, P.; Räty, J.; Ryymin, K.; Talvitie, J.; Karjalainen, A.K.; Kukkonen, J.V.K.; Roussey, M.; Peiponen, K.-E. Optical Monitoring of Microplastics Filtrated from Wastewater Sludge and Suspended in Ethanol. Polymers 2021, 13, 871. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13060871
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021051830457
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
The abundance of microplastics (MPs) in the atmosphere, on land, and especially in water bodies is well acknowledged. In this study, we establish an optical method based on three different techniques, namely, specular reflection to probe the medium, transmission spectroscopy measurements for the detection and identification, and a speckle pattern for monitoring the sedimentation of MPs filtrated from wastewater sludge and suspended in ethanol. We used first Raman measurements to estimate the presence and types of different MPs in wastewater sludge samples. We also used microscopy to identify the shapes of the main MPs. This allowed us to create a teaching set of samples to be characterized with our optical method. With the developed method, we clearly show that MPs from common plastics, such as polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS), and polyethylene (PE), are present in wastewater sludge and can be identified. Additionally, the results also indicate that the density of the plastics, which influences the sedimentation, is an essential parameter to consider in optical detection of microplastics in complex natural environments. All of the methods are in good agreement, thus validating the optics-based solution.
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