Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) play a crucial role in mitigating microplas-tic (MP) release to the environment. In this paper, a WWTP of a textile manufacturing plantin Guangdong, China, was investigated to identify MP characteristics and the effective-ness of wastewater treatment within the plant. Laser Direct Infrared (LDIR) and LiquidChromatography with Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) were applied to quantify boththe number and the mass of the microplastics in the effluent of the textile manufacturingplant where most of the wastewater were from three printing and dyeing lines.
The study further investigated the MP removal efficiency of each wastewater treatment process of theindustry-owned WWTP and analysed the removal mechanism of each step, highlightinglimitations in detecting and eliminating MPs. It is observed that (1) the results from LDIRand LC-MS/MS can be complementary to each other; (2) the MP concentration in theinfluent was 1730 n/L by number and 13.52 µg/L by mass; (3) the total removal efficiencyof the WWTP were 99% by the number of MPs and 67.7% by the mass of MPs; (4) nine typesof polymers have been identified in the influent, of which Polyamide (PA) was dominating;(5) hydrolysis acidification removed PA most; (6) aerobic tank, sand filter, and biologicalaerated filter (BAF) showed low removal efficiency; (7) coagulation and sedimentation tankhad the highest removal efficiency to PET than any other processes.
A-rapport, A2774.