Dear colleagues,
I am working on microplastics on bivalves. I have implemented mussel's digestions protocol for my samples. I digest at 40ºC for 48h and constant stirring of the sample and filter with a vacuum system. I had some problems with the filtration rate so I applied Thiele et al. 2019 method by adding some citric acid to low filtration time and it worked well. After this process, I weight my samples and I have low digestion efficiency (75-87%). Some crystals were made after digestion and I do not understand why.
Do you have any suggestions on how can I increase my digestion efficacy?
More time?
Or some H2O2 added to the filter to clean more organic matter?
Thank you for your time,
Mariona.
Hi, Mariona!
I haven't worked with bivalves yet, but when working with small fish I use 10% KOH at 40ºC for about 72h. And with filtered H2O with a squirt bottle thoroughly clean the remains from the sample glass container into the filter thus the KOH crystals can fully dissolve in the water (the same way NaCl crystals dissolve with H2O on the filter from the sediment sample). And for biota samples, the filter might be 2.7 microns pore size (GF/D), not the 1.2 (GF/C) I usually use for sediments or surface water. I tried H2O2 but it didn't work well on the test filter because it makes almost all sample content get out of the petri dish and I skipped this step onwards.
Best of luck!
Hi, Mariona. I tried extracting microplastics from mussel's digestive tract using both KOH and hydrogen peroxide. In my case, 30% hydrogen peroxide seems to do the job better than KOH. But you'll need a bigger test tube (or even a bottle) for a bigger organ or a heavier sample when using H2O2, as it is very reactive and it gets really foamy once the reaction occurs. I incubated my samples at 50ºC for 24h and it went okay, no organic matter seen.
Extracting , microplastics from mussels digestive tract need a lot of experience to apply, by applying KOH and hydrogen peroxide, this indicate of concentration and reaction between them.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Materials Science
- Materials
- Inorganic Materials
- Ceramics
- Glass