Reuse of Water Contaminated by Microplastics, the Effectiveness of Filtration Processes: A Review

Juan A. Conesa and Nuria Ortuño
Additional contact information
Juan A. Conesa: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alicante, P.O. Box 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain
Nuria Ortuño: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alicante, P.O. Box 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-16

Abstract: Water treatment generally does not specifically address the removal of microplastics (MPs). Nevertheless, treatment plants process water effectively, and the number of synthetic microparticles in effluents is usually very low. Still, discharge volumes from water-treatment plants are often elevated (reaching around 10 8 L/day), leading to the daily discharge of a substantial number of MPs and microfibers. Furthermore, MPs accumulate in the primary and secondary sludge, which in the end results in another environmental problem as they are currently used to amend soils, both for cultivation and forestry, leading to their dispersion. Something similar occurs with the treatment of water intended for human consumption, which has a much lower but still significant number of MPs. The amount of these pollutants being released into the environment depends on the processes that the water undergoes. One of the most-used treatment processes is rapid sand filtration, which is reviewed in this article. During the filtration process, MPs can break into smaller pieces, resulting in a greater number of plastic particles which mainly accumulate in sewage sludge. Thermal processes, such as incineration, carried out in facilities with the best available techniques in practice, could guarantee the safe disposal of highly MP-contaminated sewage sludges.

Keywords: drinking water; wastewater; sewage sludge; microplastics; microfibers; sand filtration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/7/2432/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/7/2432/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:7:p:2432-:d:779878

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().