First experiment using fluorescent microplastic particles completed (8/17/2021)

PolyGone reached a new milestone: our first experiment fluorescing microplastic particles to observe how microplastics behave in water!

To clearly illustrate how effectively aquatic plants and their roots can capture microplastics, we used water lettuce and UV-fluorescent polyethylene beads with a diameter between 100 and 500 micrometers. It’s abundantly clear that the amount of freely circulating plastic particles decreases significantly after just a few hours. As seen, the plastics aggregate on the underside of the leaves and in the roots. The plastics remain adhered to the plants when removed from the tank.

Moving forward, we will experiment with a variety of aquatic plant species to see which most effectively sequester plastics, microplastic types to determine whether certain ones are more efficiently captured than others, and flow rates and other water conditions to evaluate how effective our system is under a variety of river conditions.