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Microplastics Removal from Municipal Wastewater Through Oxide-Biological Processes. Phase 1: Preliminary Fragmentation of Microplastics from Wastewater and Aerobic Pre-conditioning of Wastewater with Activated Sludge
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Researchers tested a combined treatment approach for removing microplastics from municipal wastewater, involving mechanical fragmentation followed by biological treatment with activated sludge. The preliminary results suggest that oxidative pre-treatment can reduce microplastic particle size, potentially making them more amenable to biological breakdown in wastewater systems.
Environmental pollution with microplastic waste is a pressing problem of high importance world-wide. This paper is aiming at testing, on an experimental basis, by using a synthetic wastewater, a combined technology to remove the microplastic waste from wastewaters. The method involves a preliminary fragmentation of microplastics followed by the aerobic pre-conditioning of synthetic wastewater with aerobic activated sludge. The results obtained indicate that the ozonation followed by the pre-conditioning of wastewater with activated sludge improves the biodegradability of microplastics from wastewater. As proved in this paper, results in an improved removal efficiency in comparison with the simple biological treatment. An additional advantage of such a combined technology is their great operational variability, being easily changeable and adaptable to a broad range of operating parameters values (e.g.: ozone concentration, pH, retention time, dissolved oxygen, etc.).
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