Fate and removal efficiency of polystyrene nanoplastics in a pilot drinking water treatment plant.

Autor: Ramirez Arenas L; Group of Environmental Physical Chemistry, Department F.-A. Forel for environmental and aquatic sciences, University of Geneva, Uni Carl Vogt, 66, boulevard Carl-Vogt, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Electronic address: Lina.RamirezArenas@unige.ch., Ramseier Gentile S; SIG, Industrial Boards of Geneva, Ch. du Château-Bloch, Le Lignon, 1211 Genève 2, Switzerland., Zimmermann S; SIG, Industrial Boards of Geneva, Ch. du Château-Bloch, Le Lignon, 1211 Genève 2, Switzerland., Stoll S; Group of Environmental Physical Chemistry, Department F.-A. Forel for environmental and aquatic sciences, University of Geneva, Uni Carl Vogt, 66, boulevard Carl-Vogt, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Electronic address: Serge.Stoll@unige.ch.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2022 Mar 20; Vol. 813, pp. 152623. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Dec 25.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152623
Abstrakt: Occurrence of microplastics and nanoplastics in aquatic systems, as well as in water compartments used to produce drinking water have become a major concern due to their impact on the environment and public health. Nanoplastics in particular, in regard to their fate and removal efficiency in drinking water treatment plants (DWTP), which ensure water quality and supply drinking water for human consumption have been, by far, rarely investigated. This study investigates the removal efficiency of polystyrene (PS) nanoplastics in a conventional water treatment plant providing drinking water for 500'000 consumers. For that purpose, a pilot-scale DWTP, located within the main treatment plant station, reproducing at a reduced scale the different processes and conditions of the main treatment plant is used. The results show that filtration process through sand and granular activated carbon (GAC) filters in the absence of coagulation achieves an overall nanoplastic removal of 88.1%. The removal efficiency of filtration processes is mainly attributed to physical retention and adsorption mechanisms. On the other hand, it is found that coagulation process greatly improves the removal efficiency of nanoplastics with a global removal efficiency equal to 99.4%. The effective removal efficiency of sand filtration increases considerably from 54.3% to 99.2% in the presence of coagulant, indicating that most of PS nanoplastics are removed during sand filtration process. The higher removal efficiency with the addition of coagulant is related to nanoplastics surface charge reduction and aggregation thus significantly increasing their retention in the filter media.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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