I want to convert the unit of microplastics concentration in water from particles/km2 to particles/m3 and particles/L to particles/m3. Is there any formula or what are the conversion steps?
To convert microplastics concentration from particles/km2 to particles/m3, you wll need to consider the volume of water and the area covered by the microplastics.
Nishita Narwal answer it if possible.
There is a farmula to summarize the conversion, but i am not sure about that.
Hello Apurva, most of the studies that you see have to make an assumption on how deep they are determining the plastics/km2 to be- whether it is 1mm- to 20cm, or even greater. So- the km2 is often inclusive of some depth, giving you in fact a m3 or km3 result. As you are probably aware, given that you are looking for a formula, that the plastics reduce in frequency as the elevation decreases down through the water column. Additionally, please be aware that factors such as salinity, temperature and current pressure can change this. Jennifer Lavers and Martina Capriotti are two senior marine biologists working with a close focus on aquatic animals and the interference of plastics. They will have a good idea if a formula has been worked up to help nail down these numbers. There is also a fairly recent paper published by a group of scientists- Article A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillio...
Reaching out to the authors will more than likely yield some positive results, as they looked at floating (apparently neuston bound) plastics- as well as plankton captures. If you do find an overall formula, please do share your findings!
Jeffrey Shattuck Thank you very much for your answer! The number of microplastic particles can be divided by the sample area or volume of the sample to get the concentration, according to the required unit. However, I did not find any direct conversion formula as needed.
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