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Heat and Bleach: A Cost-Efficient Method for Extracting Microplastics from Return Activated Sludge

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Abstract

The extraction of plastic microparticles, so-called microplastics, from sludge is a challenging task due to the complex, highly organic material often interspersed with other benign microparticles. The current procedures for microplastic extraction from sludge are time consuming and require expensive reagents for density separation as well as large volumes of oxidizing agents for organic removal, often resulting in tiny sample sizes and thus a disproportional risk of sample bias. In this work, we present an improved extraction method tested on return activated sludge (RAS). The treatment of 100 ml of RAS requires only 6% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for bleaching at 70 °C, followed by density separation with sodium nitrate/sodium thiosulfate (SNT) solution, and is completed within 24 h. Extracted particles of all sizes were chemically analyzed with confocal Raman microscopy. An extraction efficiency of 78 ± 8% for plastic particle sizes 20 µm and up was confirmed in a recovery experiment. However, glass shards with a diameter of less than 20 µm remained in the sample despite the density of glass exceeding the density of the separating SNT solution by 1.1 g/cm3. This indicates that density separation may be unreliable for particle sizes in the lower micrometer range.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Karin Kock and Benjamin Schwanda for their technical assistance to their work. The work of Dr. Kniggendorf was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of Germany within the project of OPTIMUS (Project Number: 13N13811). The work of Surya Sujathan was funded by the DAAD Sandwich Model Scholarships for Master’s Students of the IITs and IIMs, 2015 (Personal Ref No: 91590631).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India

    Surya Sujathan

  2. Hannover Centre for Optical Technologies, Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Universität Hannover, Nienburger Str. 2, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Ann-Kathrin Kniggendorf & Bernhard Roth

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, 110016, India

    Arun Kumar

  4. Institut für Siedlungswasserwirtschaft und Abfalltechnik, Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Rosenwinkel & Regina Nogueira

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  1. Surya Sujathan
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  2. Ann-Kathrin Kniggendorf
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  3. Arun Kumar
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  4. Bernhard Roth
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  5. Karl-Heinz Rosenwinkel
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  6. Regina Nogueira
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Correspondence to Regina Nogueira.

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Sujathan, S., Kniggendorf, AK., Kumar, A. et al. Heat and Bleach: A Cost-Efficient Method for Extracting Microplastics from Return Activated Sludge. Arch Environ Contam Toxicol 73, 641–648 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00244-017-0415-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00244-017-0415-8

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