Investigation of microplastics in organized industrual zones and specific industrial wastewaters

Date

2024-11-29

Author

Karakurt, Ozan

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Microplastics (MPs) are a growing concern of governments as well as academic and environmental organizations due to their ease of transportation between environmental systems, increasing numbers and ability to transport other contaminants. In the last decades, plenty of studies focused on the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as a contributor of MPs in the environment arising from the domestic activities. However industrial wastewater treatment plants (IWWTPs) have been studied very rarely as compared to their domestic counterparts. Few studies focusing on IWWTPs and organized industrial zones (OIZs) have demonstrated that industrial wastewaters have the capacity to surpass domestic wastewaters in terms of MP pollution. To address this gap, this study aimed to analyze MPs in two different OIZs in Ankara and two selected industries from each OIZ for their plastic use and wastewater generation. It has been found that MP concentrations varied between 3 to 149 MP/L in wastewaters and reaches a value of 183 MP/g TS in sludge and have a large variety of common polymers such as LDPE, HDPE, PET and PP. Among the industries sampled paint industry had the highest MP concentration, however, having a pretreatment system reduced its concentration from 103 MP/L to 31 MP/L. Presence of an IWWTP in OIZs made a difference in discharges, demonstrating 90.9% removal efficiency on average. With this study, it is concluded that OIZs can be important contributors of MPs pollution in the environment.

Subject Keywords

Industry, Microplastics, Organized industrial zone, Wastewater

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/112973

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis