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Polyamide microplastics as better environmental vectors of Cr(VI) in comparison to polyethylene and polypropylene microplastics

Marine Pollution Bulletin 2022 36 citations

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Researchers found that polyamide microplastics adsorb more hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) than polyethylene or polystyrene microplastics, with UV aging increasing adsorption capacity, making polyamide particles potentially more dangerous environmental vectors for this toxic heavy metal.

Study Type Environmental

The adsorption, desorption, and their influence factors of Cr(VI) by microplastics (MPs) in the solution was investigated in this study. The results demonstrated that UV aging promoted adsorption, while the increase of salinity and natural organic matter (NOM) inhibited adsorption. The particle size affected the total Cr(VI) active adsorption sites on MPs, while the pH changed the electrostatic force. The Cr(VI) adsorption by MPs conformed to the pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetic models, and was monolayer and inhomogeneous. SEM-EDS, XPS and ATR-FTIR analyses demonstrated that the physical adsorption dominated the adsorption process. Especially, the highest adsorption capacity of Cr(VI) by polyamide (PA) MPs was attributed to their hydrophilic amide groups. However, Cr(VI) was only released from PA MPs, of which desorption rate followed the sequence of seawater (79.5 %) > fresh water (66.6 %) > deionized water (34.8 %). Thus, PA MPs might be non-negligible environmental vectors for the transport of Cr(VI).

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