Imaging of Microplastics in Wastewater

What is it about?

In this paper, a new method for the rapid detection of microplastics in organic-rich wastewater was developed. This involves a simple pretreatment step to remove organic materials from the sample surface (using hydrogen peroxide), followed by focal plane array (FPA)-based imaging of microplastics retained on membrane filters. The method was shown to enable the successful identification and quantification of several polymer types (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon-6, polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene).

Featured Image

Why is it important?

This method constitutes an effective and highly reproducible approach for the detection of microplastics in organic-rich aqueous samples. By averting analytical bias and enabling a significant reduction in analysis times, focal plane array-based imaging offers a significant improvement over spectroscopic analyses using a single-element detector. This approach can now be applied to improve our understanding of how microplastics are transported from freshwater environments (including wastewater treatment facilities) to marine ecosystems.