UBC’s BioProducts Institute has developed a plant-based filter, bioCap, that can capture nearly 99.9% of microplastic particles in water, providing a scalable and sustainable solution to microplastic pollution.
Could plants offer a solution to the immediate threat of microplastic pollution? added to a layer of, it was possible to create a filter that captured almost all microplastic particles present in water.
The technology is still in the experimental stage, but the researchers believe it can be scaled up affordably and efficiently with the right industry collaborators.
The challenge of microplastics
Microplastics are small pieces of plastic that arise from the degradation of consumer goods and industrial waste. Keeping them out of the water supply is a big challenge, says Dr. Orlando Rojas, the Institute’s scientific director and chair of the Canadian Excellence Research Committee for Forest Bioproducts.
He focused on a study. found Studies show that virtually all tap water is contaminated with microplastics, state More than 10 billion tonnes of plastic waste is expected to be mismanaged and diffuse into the environment by 2025.
“Most of the solutions proposed so far are either costly or difficult to scale up. Unlike plastic filters, our filters are made from renewable, biodegradable materials: tannic acid from plants, bark, wood and leaves, and wood, a widely available and renewable forestry by-product. Since we use sawdust, it does not contribute to further pollution.”
Effectiveness across plastic types
The research team analyzed particulates expelled from widely used polypropylene tea bags. They observed that their technology, called “BioCap,” captured from his 95.2 percent to a staggering 99.9 percent of plastic particles in water, depending on the type of plastic. When tested in mouse models, this process proved to prevent microplastic accumulation in organs.
Dr. Rojas, professor of wood sciences, chemical bioengineering and chemistry at UBC, emphasizes that it is difficult to capture all the different types of microplastics in solution because they differ in size, shape and electrical properties. Fee.
“Clothing produces microfibers, detergents and soaps produce microbeads, and dishes, containers, and packaging produce bubbles and pellets.By exploiting various molecular interactions around tannic acid, our bioCap solution , we were able to eliminate virtually all of these different types of microplastics.”
Interdisciplinary collaboration for sustainability
The UBC method was developed in collaboration with Professor Junling Guo, Ph.D., Center for Biomass Materials and Nano-Interface, Sichuan University, China.marina mailing, Dr. Tianyu Guo, Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biotechnology at UBC and postdoctoral fellow in the Institute of Bioproducts, also contributed to this research.
“Microplastics are a growing threat to aquatic ecosystems and human health, requiring innovative solutions. We are excited to be moving closer to a sustainable approach to fighting,” said Dr. Rojas.
Reference: “Flow-through entrapment of microplastics by polyphenol-mediated interfacial interactions on wood sawdust” Yu Wang, Mengyue Wang, Qin Wang, Taoyang Wang, Zhengming Zhou, Marina Mehling, Tianyu Guo, Hang Zou, Xiao Xiao, Yunxiang He , Xiaoling Wang, Orlando J. Rojas, Junling Guo, June 6, 2023, advanced materials.
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202301531