We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
In-situ microplastic pre-treatment and sorting using an inertial microfluidic device
Summary
Researchers developed an inertial microfluidic device capable of pre-treating and sorting microplastics in situ, enabling separation of particles by size and shape prior to chemical analysis or recycling. The system demonstrates the viability of microfluidics for scalable microplastic processing, supporting both environmental monitoring and potential resource recovery applications.
Microplastics (MPs) contamination is a growing concern due to their abundance and intrinsic negative impact on the environment and the hazardous consequences for living organisms and ecosystems. Recent studies have demonstrated the viability of creating monomers, fuels, and crucial chemicals from MP waste. However, capturing MPs to recycle is inherently challenging due to the different types and sizes of MPs in natural environments. Inertial microfluidics is a passive, practical, and high-throughput lab-on-chip technology used in various applications. It is based on the interaction of suspended microparticles and microchannels in the Stokes flow regime. In spiral-like inertial chips the Dean drag force (FD), associated with a secondary flow (Dean flow); and the inertial lift force (FL), caused by the interaction of particles with the channel walls, are the main forces that allow the mixing of reactants and microparticles sorting by size. In this work, we present the design and optimization of a Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) spiral microfluidic chip (SMC) for sorting and collecting of Polystyrene microbeads of 20 and 10 ?m. This device was fabricated by established soft lithography and placed on a 75 mm x 50 mm glass slide, features rectangular channels (400 ?m width and 250 ?m height) and was characterized at different Reynolds numbers. Its design allows adaptation to different microplastic sizes by adjusting the input velocity or geometrical parameters. In addition, the Dean flow present on SMC facilitates the reagent mixing for on-chip pre-treatment applications on MPs.Despite PDMS’s wide adoption in microfluidics due to its optical transmission, low cost, and rapid manufacturing, it degrades in the presence of solvents commonly used on pre-treatments of MPs. To address this limitation, we proposed the use of borosilicate glass as a material for the SMC, offering great potential for in-situ deployment and portable MP pre-treatment and sorting in real environments. Glass has multiple advantages, including durability and chemical inertness. However, it is notoriously difficult to manufacture cost-efficiently in small batches.Spark-Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE) is a thermochemical micromachining process for difficult-to-machine materials such as glass and ceramics. It is a contactless process with the potential for creating near-defect-free surfaces that can be directly bonded due to the absence of redeposition. Recent advances in SACE have allowed the low-cost rapid prototyping of the SMC in glass, being the first SACE-machining of an inertial microfluidic device to our knowledge. This device was benchmarked against the PDMS model, comparing various performance indicators.
Sign in to start a discussion.
More Papers Like This
Review: Impact of microfluidic cell and particle separation techniques on microplastic removal strategies
Researchers reviewed how microfluidic technology — the same miniaturized tools used in medical diagnostics to sort cells — could be adapted to separate and recover microplastics from water, offering a more precise and scalable alternative to conventional filtration methods used in wastewater treatment.
High-throughput enrichment of micro-nanoplastic using inertial microfluidics
Researchers developed a high-throughput microfluidic enrichment method using inertial microfluidics for concentrating micro- and nanoplastics from water samples, demonstrating this passive particle manipulation technique as an efficient approach for pre-concentrating plastic particles prior to analysis.
Centrifugal microfluidic chip for multi-stage sorting and detection of microplastics at micron scale
Researchers developed a centrifugal microfluidic chip that can sort and detect microplastics smaller than 63 micrometers by separating them into different size groups based on spinning forces. The chip achieved about 87% capture rate for polystyrene microspheres and also worked well with irregularly shaped microplastics. This technology offers a faster, more accurate, and simpler alternative to traditional membrane filtration for analyzing tiny microplastics in environmental samples.
A microfluidic device for size-based microplastics and microalgae separation
Researchers designed a microfluidic device that separates microplastics and microalgae by size using controlled flow patterns. The device could be used to isolate microplastics from complex environmental water samples containing biological material, improving the accuracy of microplastic monitoring.
Focusing, sorting, and separating microplastics by serial faradaic ion concentration polarization
Researchers demonstrated a microfluidic technique that uses electric fields to continuously separate two types of microplastic particles in flowing water. This lab-on-chip approach could be developed into tools for monitoring or removing specific microplastic types from water treatment systems.