Removal of Microplastics from Wastewater by Methods of Electrocoagulation and Adsorption

Microplastics are spread widely in aquatic environments, and it is a growing threat to the ecosystem. It is important to remove microplastics from wastewater, hence successful technology is required. Various techniques are used such as physical, chemical, and biological approaches to remove the microplastics present in the wastewater. One of the techniques is the membrane filtration method to remove the plastic but it creates membrane fouling and replacing a new membrane frequently is expensive. Another method of microplastic removal is biodegradation. However, biological method takes a longer time for degradation and its efficiency is very low. Hence an electrochemical and adsorption method has been adopted to remove the microplastics present in the wastewater. Aluminum–stainless steel (Al–SS) and iron–copper (Fe–Cu) electrodes were used to study the microplastic removal using the electrocoagulation process. The removal percentage was 85.5% for Al–SS and 92.5% for the Fe–Cu electrode. An adsorption technique has also been attempted using magnetic iron oxide as an adsorbent and 96% removal of microplastics was achieved. A quantitative technique has been proposed to measure the microplastic present before and after the treatment process.