Abundance and removal characteristics of microplastics at a wastewater treatment plant in Zhengzhou
- PDF / 966,864 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 72 Downloads / 179 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Abundance and removal characteristics of microplastics at a wastewater treatment plant in Zhengzhou PengJu Ren 1,2 & Ming Dou 1,2,3 & Cai Wang 4 & GuiQiu Li 2 & Ruipeng Jia 1,2 Received: 24 November 2019 / Accepted: 4 June 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The widespread use of synthetic polymers has made microplastic (MP) a new type of contaminant that has attracted worldwide attention. Studies have shown that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are an important source of MP collection in the natural environment. This study investigated the removal efficiency and migration characteristics of MPs by sampling the sewage from each treatment section of a WWTP in Zhengzhou, China. The results showed that the abundance of MPs in the influent water and primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment discharges was 16.0, 10.3, 4.5, and 2.9 MP/L, respectively, and the total removal rate of MPs from the influent to the final effluent reached 81.9%. The MPs in the WWTP were mainly small-sized (0.08–0.55 mm), followed by medium-sized (0.55–1.7 mm). Fibers were the dominant MP shape in both the water and sediment samples. Black (36%) and red (23%) were the dominant MP colors. Six different polymer types of MPs were detected, which were mainly polypropylene followed by polyethylene. In general, for the MPs in the WWTP, the removal rate of fragments can reach 97.08%, which is better than that of fibers (70.50%); the removal rate of small-sized can reach 95.86%, which is better than that of medium-sized (83.53%) and large-sized (70.00%). In this study, primary treatment has better effects in eliminating fragments and large-sized MPs; secondary treatment has better effects in eliminating fibers and small-sized MPs. Although WWTPs have a very good removal effect on MPs, 870 million MP/d are still discharged into nearby rivers from WWTPs with a treatment scale of 300,000 m3/day. Keywords Microplastics . Wastewater treatment plant . Abundance . Treatment efficiency . Removal characteristics . Zhengzhou
Introduction Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-09611-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ming Dou [email protected] 1
School of Water Conservancy Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, No. 100 of Kexue Road Zhengzhou 450001 Henan China
2
School of Ecology and Environment, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001 China
3
Zhengzhou Key Laboratory of Water Resource and Environment, Zhengzhou 450001 China
4
Nantong Branch Bureau, Jiangsu Province Hydrology and Water Resources Investigation Bureau, Nantong 226000 China
Global plastic production has been growing since 1950 (Plastic Europe 2018). The widespread use and persistence of synthetic polymers make plastics a new type of pollutant which has attracted much attention in recent years (Wright et al. 2013). Li (2019) has reported that in May 2019, explorers discovered pla
Data Loading...
