Microplastics: An overview on separation, identification and characterization of microplastics

Abstract

At present plastic residues has become grave threat to the environment. Microplastics are plastic residues with a size <5 mm, due to their small size it is very difficult to remove them from water bodies, sediments and air with available techniques. Nanoplastics are different in size range as nanoplastics are smaller than 1 μm in size. This review is an attempt to gather an insight towards microplastic and its associated point of concerns. The review will highlight some of the methods appropriate for microplastics sampling and techniques for its identification in environmental samples. Some of the sampling methods include sieving, filtration, visual sorting, digestion, density separation. While, identification techniques in practice are SEM-EDS, FTIR, NIR, Raman, NMR spectroscopy, etc. Still there is a need and scope for development of more economical and portable techniques in this direction.

Keywords: Density separation; Digestion; FTIR; Microplastics; NIR; Raman spectroscopy; SEM; qNMR.