Manufacturers have produced highly effective synthetic polymer sorbents in granular form for responding to marine oil and chemical spills. However, as these are effectively plastic beads, I want to be sure that overspill and loose unrecovered product breaks down in the sea in reasonable time and to non-toxic products, so as not to add to microplastic pollution loads and create ingestion hazards for wildlife, etc. Most polymer persistence tests appear to be for measuring improving persistence, not for measuring short-term (days to weeks) persistence.
determining the migration of monomers in polymers in different aqueous media is recommended. I like to cooperate with you about the researching in this special topic as you wish. my personal Email is [email protected].
Dear Mr. Irving, degradation of synthetic polimers depends on many factors, such as polymer structure, length, temperature and light intensity. To the the best of my knowledge, specific testings are not available for the marine environment, even if they should be highly reccomended. Experimental data from plastics similar to those applied for chemical spills indicate high persistence (months to years) in the marine enviroment. If you are interested in more details, please don't hesitate to contact me ([email protected]). Best regards, Giulio.
The question is too wide, because a wide range of different chemical composition polymers are being produced nowadays. Different chemistry, different persistence, different degradation ability... If you are interested in a specific water ecosystem, you better take information about the major type of plastics thrown there, and you should know the process of degradation of that polymer. Than you look on the toxicity of monomers produced from the degradation. If you expect phthalates to be there, than you determine their quantity in water, and so on. Good luck!
Echoing Elda's comment, somewhat. Do you have a formula for the absorbent? Know the monomers? Even a trade name would help. I am very curious about this problem as well, but mainly from the point of view of photodegradation of the polymers and how that affects the efficiency of oil absorption and retention. The flip side of that question is how much the photodegradation releases polymer subunits to the water. There are lots of standard methods for compounds similar to what I suspect are the monomers and other pieces of these polymers (e.g., crosslinkers), and if you narrow down the question to a specific class of compounds you are looking for, a suitable method could be chosen.
I appreciate the responses, but my problem is relatively simple. Unless I can find a simple and robust means for a manufacturer to be able to determine the mass and breakdown fate of their loose synthetic polymers, in a marine environment, in addition to the oil (pollutant), then I will assume they are persistant, that any escape from the response site (oiled or not) will add to the already well documented micro-plastic marine pollution load, that they will also attract (adsorb )and concentrate other pollutants and so create a very specific and well-documented hazard to marine life through ingestion, and so will find it extremely difficult to have them listed on our Oil Spill Control Agents Register for acceptable use in Australian waters. This notwithstanding their often very well documented effectiveness of supporting pollutant recovery in response. The risk of longterm hazard and damage cant be assesed if the behaviour and fate of the response chemical (loose granular synthetic polymer) cant be characterised in a reproduceable manner. Further thoughts and comments appreciated.
Of course you can test for the monomers, you can also test for breakdown products. The easiest go is monitor the degradation/leaching by means of HPLC-MS/MS directly from water (sensitivity usually down to 0.01-0.1 µg/L without preconcentration). Though of course in principle each material will emit something I would be surprised if there was not reasonable materials for which leaching would be so low, that in case of an oilspill the cost/benifit would easily be in favour of using the material. I Europe there are standards for detecting leaching from building materials, basically a testbody of the material is contacted with water in a closed vessel under controlled conditions and the concentrations of the leachtes is monitored. maybe you can use that?
In a lab the answer may be straightforwards but both the following papers will give you a start on the degradation process for polymers:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es2031505
http://plasticsoupfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Microplastics-in-the-marine-environment.pdf
I'm looking at micro plastics in beach sand, and the data I have amassed is consistent with what other researchers have found. In some cases, rural beaches in Scotland show up to 100,000 fibres per meter cubed.
The problem with the plastic polymer is that it sorbs the PAH's you describe and then releases them back into the food chain via ingestion.from plankton etc.
Degradation of this type of polymer essentially means it decreases in size, while effectively increasing surface area.
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