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Feasibility Study for the Development of a Low-Cost, Compact, and Fast Sensor for the Detection and Classification of Microplastics in the Marine Environment
Summary
A feasibility study demonstrated that a compact, low-cost sensor using just three infrared photodiodes can classify the most common floating marine microplastics — polyethylene and polypropylene — with about 90% accuracy, making it potentially deployable on ocean drifters for large-scale monitoring. Affordable, scalable detection tools like this are critical for filling major data gaps in global microplastic distribution mapping.
The detection and classification of microplastics in the marine environment is a complex task that implies the use of delicate and expensive instrumentation. In this paper, we present a preliminary feasibility study for the development of a low-cost, compact microplastics sensor that could be mounted, in principle, on a float of drifters, for the monitoring of large marine surfaces. The preliminary results of the study indicate that a simple sensor equipped with three infrared-sensitive photodiodes can reach classification accuracies around 90% for the most-diffused floating microplastics in the marine environment (polyethylene and polypropylene).