Treatment of microplastic pollution

Microplastics including microbeads and micro fragment became one of the concerning environment pollution these days. Researchers are working on microplastics removal and treatment processes and have found various methods including conventional water treatment, membrane water treatment, as well as other emerging technology.

The conventional water treatment could potentially remove 99.9% of microplastics after primary and secondary treatments because floating microplastics of lower density can be skimmed off while those trapped in solid flocs would settle (1). It almost seems to be perfect treatment methods but these removed microplastics will be concentrated in the sludge and there will be secondary pollution or secondary problem after disposal because sludge with microplastics should be treated again.  The membrane water treatment system with the use of polymeric membrane and bio-membrane as filter could remove 99.4% of microplastics but there are no studies yet for the removal of microplastics on the membrane prior to their reuse and recycle (2). There are also emerging technologies for microplastics removal such as electrocoagulation, magnetic extraction, sol-gel method and pilot scale biofilter but the management of microplastics trapped during all processes and the fate of microplastics are warrant for further research.

Therefore, like the health proverb “prevention is better than cure”, we should reduce, reuse and recycle the plastics and mitigate the pollution problem rather than finding a way to treat them later on.

1. Carr, S.A., Liu, J., Tesoro, A.G., 2016. Transport and fate of microplas- tic particles in wastewater treatment plants. Water Res. 91, 174–182. doi:1016/j.watres.2016.01.002.
2. H.D. Tang and T. Hadibarata, 2021, Microplastics removal through water treatment plants: Its feasibility, efficiency, future prospects and enhancement by proper waste management, Environmental Challenges doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2021.100264

Written by: Moe Thazin Shwe, SOLEN Research Associate and IPC panel member

Edited by: Hendra Winastu, SOLEN Principal Associate and IPC Panel Coordinator

Date: 8 November 2022

Article#: SOLEN-IPC-0003

The Former Article: https://solenvn.com/en/3017-2/
The Latter Article: https://solenvn.com/en/different-types-of-micro-plastics/