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A concept for the removal of microplastics from the marine environment with innovative host-guest relationships
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This paper proposes using host-guest chemistry — where specially designed molecules selectively bind and capture target particles — as a novel approach to removing microplastics from marine water. The concept aims to address the limitation of current wastewater treatment systems, which allow many tiny plastic particles to pass through.
Environmental pollution caused by inert anthropogenic stressors such as microplastics in aquatic media is constantly increasing. Through the proliferating use of plastic products in daily life, more and more plastic particles enter waters as primary microplastics. Even though large scale plastic items such as plastic bottles and bags represent the highest percentage of plastic waste, their degeneration also generates microparticles and nanoparticles (secondary microplastics). Modern sewage treatment plants require innovative ideas in order to deal with this man-made problem. State-of-the-art technology offers approaches to minimise the amount of microplastics in aquatic systems. These technologies, however, are either insufficient or very costly, as well as time-consuming in both cases. The conceptual idea presented here is to apply innovative inorganic-organic hybrid silica gels which provide a cost-effective and straightforward approach. Currently, the synthesis of preorganised bioinspired compounds is advancing in order to produce functionalised hybrid silica gels in a further step. These gels have the ability to remove stressors such as microplastics from waste water. By means of the sol-gel process, bioinspired silane compounds are currently being permuted to macromolecules and examined with respect to their properties as fixation and filter material in order to remove the hydrophobic anthropogenic stressors sustainably. Here, the reproduction of biological systems plays a significant role. In particular in material sciences, this approach is becoming increasingly important. Among other concepts, new biomimetic molecules form the basis for the investigation of innovative host-guest relationships for anthropogenic stressors in the environment and their implementation in technical processes.
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Researchers reviewed how microplastics spread through aquatic environments and carry toxic chemicals along with them, summarizing the characteristics of different plastic types and the removal mechanisms currently used to reduce microplastic contamination in water systems.
Possibilities of removing microplastics from the aquatic environment using membrane processes
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Tiny plastic particles are showing up in our drinking water, and this review paper looks at how well water treatment plants can filter them out. The good news: special membrane filtering systems (especially ones that combine filtering with bacteria that break down waste) can remove up to 99.9% of microplastics from wastewater, though scientists still need to solve some practical challenges before these systems can be widely used everywhere. This matters because reducing microplastics in our water supply could help limit our exposure to these particles, whose long-term health effects are still being studied.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.