Microplastic Analysis in Soft and Sea Waters
Project no. 23882 · Status: Kapanmış · 2022
Summary
<p>The biggest problems about microplastic are upon water products. There are still lacks about reaching the sources, making research and analysis of such products. As long as we continue to use these water welded products, the analysis of microplastics carry fairly weight with global as well as about our country and there is a need to make these analyses with safe, new and environmental harmless methods. Even though spectroscopic methods have been developed for the detection of microplastics in recent years, analytical approaches focusing on the subject and especially electrochemical studies are very limited. Spectroscopic and thermo-analytical methods applying with this aim are insufficient to supply both qualitative and quantitative analysis and the way of method combination is gone to make up the deficient side of a method. This one both increases the analysis cost and makes the sample preparation stage complex. Microplastic analysis in soft and sea waters has been made with this project. Electrochemical techniques have been performed with electrodes having the accumulation feature of polymers on surface and there is a specific potential response of each polymer’s own. The electrochemical result which is suitable for each polymer has been obtained by the functionalization of electrodes with various nanostructures such as graphene oxide (GO), carbon nanotube (CNT), gold (Au) and silver (Ag) nanoparticle. The surfaces of designed electrodes have been characterized by surface imaging techniques such as Scanning Electron Microscope-Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Electrochemical methods have been applied for the detection of polymers containing high abundance in the microplastics such as polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The metal and mineral analysis of samples such as soft and sea water which can be contaminated by microplastics has been supported by reliable spectroscopic methods such as Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). </p>