AOPs: A powerful tool for nanoplastics mineralization in water – AOPNANOP

Micro- and nano-sized plastic waste rejected in marine and freshwater bodies have to be considered as environmental contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) as they may cause adverse ecological or human health impacts. They have been detected in freshwaters around the world, including polar regions. Currently, there are no effective treatment methods especially for NPs smaller than 100 nm that bypass all treatment stages of municipal wastewater treatment plants WWTPs and are released into the environment. The objectives of the project are to evaluate and to compare, the feasibility of the degradation (mineralization) of NPs by a representative selection of homogeneous and heterogeneous advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). AOPs are very powerful oxidative processes used for treatment of recalcitrant organic pollutants. The mineralization rate of aqueous suspensions of model nanoplastic (PS, PE…), the analysis of by-products and water ecotoxicity tests are used (among others) as efficiency indicators for AOPs. The success of this multidisciplinary project will be ensured by the complementarity of the participants specializing in the fields of AOPs (homogeneous and heterogeneous), the synthesis and characterization of nanoplastics models as well as ecotoxicity tests.