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Commercial screen-printed carbon electrodes for real-time and in situ monitoring of organic UV filters: Application to study their adsorption onto polyethylene microplastics
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A lab test used low-cost electrode sensors to continuously track two sunscreen chemicals (benzophenone-3 and octocrylene) sticking to polyethylene microplastic pellets in stirred water over 24 to 48 hours. The sensors measured chemical levels in real time, offering more frequent data than standard lab methods, and worked reliably and durably under stirring.
This work demonstrates the use of commercial screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) coupled with differential pulse adsorptive stripping voltammetry (DPAdSV) for the in-situ and continuous monitoring, over 24 – 48 h, of the concentration of the organic UV filters benzophenone-3 (BP-3) and octocrylene (OC) as they adsorb onto polyethylene (PE) pellets in stirred aqueous solutions. The approach enables a large set of real-time measurements with minimal disturbance of the solution, providing a valuable complement, with higher temporal resolution, to conventional off-line kinetic studies of UV-filter adsorption onto microplastics, typically performed by HPLC-MS/MS. Moreover, the high reproducibility and durability of SPCE units under stirred conditions highlight their potential for the continuous monitoring of target pollutants in real environmental matrices, especially when integrated into automated systems involving periodic sensor replacement and recalibration.
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