NSERC Alliance Grant: Microplastics fingerprinting at the watershed scale: From sources to receivers
The Chair team together with other researchers from UW and lead by Philippe Van Cappellen, from the Earth & Environmental Sciences Department, was successful in obtaining funding from the NSERC Alliance Grant competition on plastics science for a cleaner future. The research proposal is entitled "Microplastics fingerprinting at the watershed scale: From sources to receivers" The project will contribute to Canada’s Plastics Science Agenda (CaPSA) by advancing the detection, quantification and characterization of microplastics in the environment, and developing the assessment and modeling tools needed to predictively understand the sources and fate of different types of microplastics, with consideration of their structural and chemical properties. The Chair team is working on the drinking water component of this project with the support of several Chair partners. The project will inform science-based risk assessments, governance approaches and adaptive watershed management designed to reduce and prevent the environmental and health impacts of microplastics.
Removal of Polystyrene Microplastic spheres by Alum-based Coagulation-Flocculation-Sedimentation (CFS) Treatment of Surface Waters. Xue, J., Peldszus, S., Van Dyke, M. I., & Huck, P. M. 2021. Chemical Engineering Journal, 422, 1-11
Microplastic pollution is a global urgent issue which has potential adverse impacts on the environment, and animal and human health. The study examined different alum doses applied to several microsphere sizes and source waters. Specifically, the study looked at the removal of carboxylated polystyrene (PS) microspheres in a wide size range (3, 6, 25, 45, and 90 μm) in two types of real surface waters (Grand River and Lake Erie water) that are sources for full-scale drinking water treatment plants, and performed alum-based coagulation-flocculation-sedimentation (CFS) bench tests.
The objectives were to 1) evaluate the performance of CFS in removing spherical PS microplastics from natural waters; 2) investigate the influence of alum dose on the removal of PS microspheres; 3) examine the effect of particle size on the removal of PS microplastic spheres in alum-based CFS treatment; and 4) explore the impact of water source (quality) on the removal of PS microplastics by alum-based CFS. Removal of carboxylated PS microspheres in five different sizes (3, 6, 25, 45, and 90 µm) was tested.
The results suggested that alum dose, microsphere size, and water source substantially influenced the removal of PS microspheres in alum-based CFS treatment. The findings indicated that small microplastics (≤ 25 µm) can be effectively removed with alum-CFS treatment, whereas bigger microplastics (≥ 45 µm) could be treated effectively with granular media or membrane filtration.
There are limited studies on microplastics in drinking water treatment processes, and the findings of this study will improve the current understanding of the behavior and mitigation of spherical and similarly shaped microplastics by CFS treatment of drinking water.
Please contact Lorena Baku (lorena.baku@uwaterloo.ca ) if you would like a pdf copy of this paper