Removal of microplastics from wastewater for world water pool protection

Microplastics Wastewater Cleaning BiosorbentsMicroplastics are one of the new pollutants and are a threat to natural aquatic ecosystems as well as human health.After entering natural reservoirs, microplastic particles are quickly settled and covered with surfactants of microbial origin.This fundamentally changes the properties and behavior of MP in water: particles become highly hydrophilic and acquire the ability to absorb many pollutants, such as metal ions and pharmaceuticals.This changes the properties and behavior of microplastics in water: particles become highly hydrophilic and acquire the ability to absorb many pollutants, such as metal ions and pharmaceuticals.Particles of microplastics are not removed during the treatment of wastewater at municipal treatment plants and in large quantities enter with purified waters in natural reservoirs.Therefore, it is necessary to develop additional measures for microplastic removal from purified wastewater after their treatment at municipal treatment plants.The present review considers techniques aimed to remove microplastics from purified wastewater to protect the environment.It has been found that when treating wastewater using traditional technology, it is possible to remove from 83% to 98% of microplastics from its initial amount.However, given the huge volumes of treated wastewater entering natural reservoir, this causes a real threat to the environment.To further remove microplastics, it is possible to use flocculation or filtration as a modification of existing water treatment systems, as well as tertiary treatment methods, such as purification in a membrane bioreactor, reverse osmosis or ultrafiltration units.All of these technologies can significantly increase the percentage of removed microplastic, but are expensive, making them difficult to use at a large scale.A promising approach is the use of biosorbents (biomass of agricultural or forest waste).