WASTE MANAGEMENT INDUSTRIAL - RADIOACTIVE - HAZARDOUS, cilt.181, ss.79-88, 2024 (SCI-Expanded)
There is little knowledge about microplastic (MP) pollution in plastic
recycling facility (PRF) wastewater. In this study, MPs in the
wastewaters of four PRFs located in Türkiye were characterized for size,
shape, color, and polymer types after sieving from 5,000 µm to the
lowest 75 µm with seven sieves. The wet peroxide oxidation procedure was
applied before attenuated total reflectance fourier transform infrared
spectroscopy analysis for polymer identification. Polyethylene, and
polypropylene were the dominant (75 % of total count) MP types within 22
polymer types. Average hit qualities of polymers increased from 69 % to
above 84 % for the device software (OPUS) and open software
(OpenSpecy). The abundance of MPs was determined as 53,987 MPs/L and
0.8 g MP/L for mixed PRFs 7,582 MPs/L and 4.6 g/L for the LDPE recycling
facility, and 2,196 MPs/L and 0.06 g MPs/L for the granulation cooling
water by count and weight, respectively. Small-sized MPs are found in
the bottom sample much more than the surface and effluent samples in the
washing tank. This indicated that MPs adsorbed the pollutants settled
in the washing tank due to adsorbed pollution/biofilm. A maximum of
4.6 kg MP/ton of plastic recycled can be discharged as MPs that can be
recovered. Considering the plastics recycling capacity, discharged MPs
in these PRFs are possibly above 30,000 tons.