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Data supporting Biofilm Formation Promotes Microplastic Mobility via Hydrodynamic Forces
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Researchers generated a dataset supporting experiments on how biofilm formation affects microplastic mobility, demonstrating through hydrodynamic force measurements that biofouled microplastics exhibit altered transport behaviour compared to clean particles, with implications for predicting MP fate and distribution in aquatic environments.
This dataset supports the manuscript “Biofilm Formation Promotes Microplastic Mobility via Hydrodynamic Forces.” It includes measurements of biofilm area and the percentage of transported beads under five different flow rates, as well as an example set of microscopy images and a MATLAB dataset used for image processing. In the manuscript, we demonstrate that the presence of biofilms alters the hydrodynamic forces acting on microplastic particles. Specifically, biofilms modify the local pressure field and generate lift forces strong enough to mobilize particles even under weak shear conditions.
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.