Original data for article: Particle balance and return loops for microplastics in a tertiary-level wastewater treatment plant

Abstract
Microplastics (MPs) from households, stormwaters and various industries are transported to wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) where a high proportion of them are captured before discharging their residuals to watersheds. Although recent studies have indicated that the removed MPs are mainly retained in wastewater sludge, sludge treatment processes have gained less attention in MP research compared to water streams at primary, secondary and tertiary treatments. In this study, we sampled twelve different phases in a tertiary-level municipal WWTP in Central Finland. Our results showed that compared to plant influent load, three times higher number of MPs was circulating via reject water from the sludge centrifugation back to the beginning of the treatment process. Especially fibrous MPs were trapped in the dewatered sludge whereas fragment-like MPs were transported in aqueous stream. We concluded that sludge treatment is the main exit route for MPs into environment but also a return loop to the beginning of the process. Our sampling campaign also demonstrated that WWTPs with varying hydraulic conditions, such as the one studied here, benefit from disc filter based tertiary treatments in MP removal.
Main Authors
Format
Dataset
Published
2020
Publication in research information system
Publisher
University of Jyväskylä, Open Science Centre. jyx@jyu.fi
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202009035741Use this for linking
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17011/jyx/dataset/71624
License
CC BY 4.0Open Access
Copyright© Pauliina Salmi, Kalle Ryymin, Anna K. Karjalainen, Anna Mikola, Emilia Uurasjärvi, Julia Talvitie and University of Jyväskylä

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