I am investigating microplastics in ussels around the UK. I boiled the mussels as I figured it would be the easiest way of opening them, and kept the water to filter so I didn't lose any microplastics, but the water keeps clogging up the filters and therefore it is taking me ages to separate the microplastics from the filter paper.
What is clogging your filters is the mucil of the mitilidae, you can change the filters more often and let them dry trying to sample the microplastics using a wide field microscope so I try to elaborate statistics.
Try injected air flotation to move the lightest plastics to the top, skim off, then use a centrifuge and filter to eliminate the water.
It seems the organic material is resposible for filter clogging so, i think you can
a: use the Wet Peroxyde Oxydation process and susequently, density separation for obtained water before filtering, as it used by " Masura, Julie, et al. "Laboratory methods for the analysis of microplastics in the marine environment: recommendations for quantifying synthetic particles in waters and sediments." (2015)."
b; use selective fluorescent staining method using Nile Red (NR), followed by density separation and finally filtration.
Maes T, Jessop R, Wellner N, Haupt K, Mayes AG. A rapid-screening approach to detect and quantify microplastics based on fluorescent tagging with Nile Red. Scientific Reports. 2017 Mar 16;7:44501.
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