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Microplastics Undergo Fragmentation during PressurizedMembrane Filtration
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Water treatment plants often use pressure-based filters to strain out tiny plastic particles from drinking water, but this study found that the process can actually break those particles into even smaller fragments, with nearly 68% of test plastic particles fracturing after just 3 hours. This matters because the leftover wastewater (concentrate) from filtration ends up more contaminated with hard-to-detect micro-fragments, meaning current filtration methods may be creating smaller plastic pollution problems even as they solve bigger ones.
Abstract Low-micrometer microplastics (<10 μm) have been detected in drinking water, driving growing interest in using pressure-driven membrane filtration to remove these particles and ensure drinking water safety. However, little attention is paid to the fate of microplastics concentrated in the filtration byproduct. In this study, using well-defined polystyrene (PS) and poly(methyl methacrylate) microspheres as model particles, we observed microplastic fragmentation during nanofiltration and the subsequent release of smaller fragments. After operating for 3 h at 20 bar, 67.9 ± 8.0% of the PS spheres in the concentrate, based on particles counted in selected fields of view, were transformed into fractured particles. The characteristic Raman band signals of microplastics were significantly weakened after fragmentation, leading to detection challenges. To address this, a data processing algorithm was developed to identify PS fragments as small as 1 μm. Preliminary statistical analysis reveals that within the tested pressure range, operation time has a stronger influence on fragmentation than pressure magnitude alone and that fragmentation is further governed by the intrinsic mechanical properties of the tested model polymers. This work provides direct evidence that pressure-driven membrane processes induce microplastic fragmentation and highlights the environmental risks associated with the discharge of fragmented microplastics into the concentrate.
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