Chinese researchers have discovered that more than 60 percent of microplastics can be removed from wastewater, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The researchers from the CAS Wuhan Botanical Garden researched the removal of microplastics in a sewage treatment plant at Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province.
They found that 64.4 percent of microplastics in wastewater can be disposed of, and the removed microplastics were mostly transferred to and stored in sludge. This study was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal.
Fiber and fragments were the main microplastics particles found at wastewater sampling sites.
The percentage of larger microplastics in the effluent wastewater was reduced compared to that in the influent wastewater due to decomposition during the flow of wastewater and sedimentation becoming sludge.
Polyamide, or nylon, was found to be the main plastic component in wastewater at 54.8 percent, indicating that the microplastic particles may primarily originate from the wastewater discharged by washing clothes and polymer manufacturing and processing industries.
The deepest part of the world's ocean and its hadal bottom waters have been polluted by microplastics, according to previous reports.
Microplastics with a diameter smaller than five millimeters have severely influenced aquatic organisms. (Xinhua)
Professor ZHU Yongguan from Institute of Urban Environment and his collaborators recently conducted a nation-wide survey of antimicrobial resistance elements in urban sewage and depicted that the distribution of antimicrobial resistant genes was characterized by the well-known “Hu Huanyong line”, which delineates a striking difference in the distribution of China’s population.
China has made rapid improvements in its sanitary services in recent years by building wastewater treatment plants. Yet its 4,000 sewage treatment plants could pose a risk of secondary contamination if they are unable to dispose excessive sludge properly, according to a Chinese scientist Tuesday.Over 90 percent of municipal sewage and over 50 percent of industrial wastewater are treated using an activated sludge (AS) process in China.But challenges such as high energy-consumption, frequent sludge bulking and foaming still remain.To unveil this mystery, CAS scientists studied the microbiome of AS and found that bacterial floc formation plays a central role in the process, allowing the sludge-and-effluent separation and recycling of AS.
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