TY - JOUR
T1 - A synthetic microplastic fiber-manufacturing method and analysis of airborne microplastic fiber transport behavior in porous media
AU - Lüscher, Stéphane Michel
AU - Jo, Ho Young
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to the number of people who helped form this study. I would like to thank the Korea University in Seoul for the generous financial support and providing of laboratory equipment used to conduct the experiments. Special thanks go to Rha Sunwon, research assistant of Korea University, for offering help in the handling of laboratory equipment. This work was supported in part by Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) through Subsurface Environment Management (SEM) Project, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) (2018002440002). Stéphane Lüscher conceived of the presented idea and as well as the methods for generating microplastic fibers and performed the experiment. Professor Ho Young Jo verified the methods and supervised the findings of this work. Both authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.
Funding Information:
I am grateful to the number of people who helped form this study. I would like to thank the Korea University in Seoul for the generous financial support and providing of laboratory equipment used to conduct the experiments. Special thanks go to Rha Sunwon, research assistant of Korea University, for offering help in the handling of laboratory equipment. This work was supported in part by Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) through Subsurface Environment Management (SEM) Project, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) ( 2018002440002 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/9/10
Y1 - 2022/9/10
N2 - Long-term environmental contamination through microplastic (MP) exposure remains poorly understood and may pose economic and geochemical threats. Notably, only a few studies have been conducted on MP contamination of soils. This study investigated the migration of AMP fibers and their influence on water flow rates through porous media. Multiple columns with diameters of 5 cm and water flow rates of 3 ml/min were filled with glass beads or sand. The particle sizes varied between 3 mm for glass beads and 1–2 or 2–4 mm for sand. A method on how to artificially manufacture MP fibers with sizes ranging from 500 to 1000 μm representing AMP fibers occurring in the environment is introduced. The MP fibers were then introduced into water at varying concentrations that were reported in previous studies. The results revealed that regardless of their concentration, the MP fibers suspended in the water did not clog the porous media. In fact, although the fibers penetrated and accumulated in the soil, they did not disrupt the water flow. We recommend that future research focuses on using MP particles with varying densities and at lower concentrations, to prevent flocculation and increase the experiment run time.
AB - Long-term environmental contamination through microplastic (MP) exposure remains poorly understood and may pose economic and geochemical threats. Notably, only a few studies have been conducted on MP contamination of soils. This study investigated the migration of AMP fibers and their influence on water flow rates through porous media. Multiple columns with diameters of 5 cm and water flow rates of 3 ml/min were filled with glass beads or sand. The particle sizes varied between 3 mm for glass beads and 1–2 or 2–4 mm for sand. A method on how to artificially manufacture MP fibers with sizes ranging from 500 to 1000 μm representing AMP fibers occurring in the environment is introduced. The MP fibers were then introduced into water at varying concentrations that were reported in previous studies. The results revealed that regardless of their concentration, the MP fibers suspended in the water did not clog the porous media. In fact, although the fibers penetrated and accumulated in the soil, they did not disrupt the water flow. We recommend that future research focuses on using MP particles with varying densities and at lower concentrations, to prevent flocculation and increase the experiment run time.
KW - Airborne microplastic
KW - Column-based experiment
KW - Soil contamination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85130525255&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155888
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155888
M3 - Article
C2 - 35580675
AN - SCOPUS:85130525255
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 838
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 155888
ER -