Preliminary Examination on isolation of Microplastics (MPs) in Sewage Sludge from the Local Wastewater Treatment Plant
Priyanka M1, Saravanakumar MP2
1Priyanka M, School of Civil Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India.
2Saravanakumar MP, Department of Environment and water resource, School of Civil Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India.
Manuscript received on September 23, 2019. | Revised Manuscript received on October 15, 2019. | Manuscript published on October 30, 2019. | PP: 7514-7516 | Volume-9 Issue-1, October 2019 | Retrieval Number: A3130109119/2019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.A3130.109119
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: The outfalls from wastewater treatment plant has become a major receptor for the release of large quantity of microplastics (MPs) in the environment. To investigate such premise, the present work investigates the preliminary study on detecting and isolating the microplastics present in the sewage sludges, which extensively used as a fertilizer. Especially, the sludge-based MPs are greatly found in India and Southeast Asian countries. The average concentration MPs found in the sludge was found to be 31×103 particles per kg of dry sludge. In order to evaluate the performance of the methods used, spike study was tested using Polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate and polyethylene materials. These outcomes confirmed that sewage sludge disposal is one of the main sources of microplastic pollution in the ecosystem.
Keywords: Microplastics, Sewage sludges, Isolation, Quantification, Distribution.