How can we measure the concentrations of microplastics in water?
What are the standard methods of measuring micro plastic pollutants in water?
What kind of laboratory equipment we need to conduct such a analysis?
What type of water sample are you going to work on? Is that WW, surface water? or drinking water? There are different protocols for different samples.
I would recommend this article if you're going to look at MPs in drinking water.Article Low numbers of microplastics detected in drinking water from...
Shima Ziajahromi and Zhiquan Liu
Thanks a lot.Basically for in water environment and biotissues.
Your ideal method/equipment will depend on what you are specifically looking for. Assuming you are looking into marine environments, water can be evaluated using surface and sub-surface water sampling.
Article Microplastics in surface waters of Dongting Lake and Hong Lake, China
Article Microplastics in sub-surface waters of the Arctic Central Basin
Article Microplastic pollution in the surface waters of Italian Suba...
Sampling from biological samples like scats and stomach contents is described here.
Article Microplastic Extraction from Marine Vertebrate Digestive Tra...
I would like to advise you on the technical report on the issue of monitoring protocols for microplastics in water.
Technical Report Standardised protocol for monitoring microplastics in seawater
More generally, I advise you on the reports from Baseman on the protocols for studying microplastics.
Technical Report Standardised protocol for monitoring microplastics in sediments
Technical Report Harmonized protocol for monitoring microplastics in biota
A college of mine recently published a paper about a new design of sampling system which uses suction based filtration onto cylindrical filters. The design has been adopted by other groups since it's creation here in Germany. We've used it to sample down to a theoretical size of 10 microns (mesh size) although you could go as small as the filter sizes you want. We also have managed to get as much as 2 cubic meters (although water characteristics have the most baring in how much you collect). It is plastic-free in design (except PTFE, which we omit) and fully sealed, which a lot of net-and-sieve-based approaches aren't. DOI is below, open access:
Article Small Microplastic Sampling in Water: Development of an Enca...
If you are focusing on marine environment, you can collect the water sample by using plankton net (mesh size 80 μm). Concern about the distance you drag the net, diameter of the net and the boat speed. Use the density separation method to differentiate MPs from organic matters (1.2 g/ml NaCl). For the confirmation or polymer type identification FTIR or Raman spectrometer can be used.
For further details refer this article: Article Evidence of microplastics pollution in coastal beaches and w...
You can check out this review paper on methods for microplastic analysis.
Article A review of methods for measuring microplastics in aquatic e...
Leila methods Leila Shafea . Are you using FTIR or microFTIR during the inspection?
Since my work (analysis) is related to the soil, then I did not use this method personally, although this method ( FTIR ) also will be used for MP in water and sediment as well,
Check the link;
Method Analysis of Microplastics using FTIR Imaging Application Note
Regards
L.S
@Leila Shafer, can you help me with the appropriate formula for calculating the *volume of water filtered* considering the flow rate.
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