2021 | Brazil | Gabriel Fernandes Mello Ferreira

Development of a microplastic retention mechanism in water treatment plants (WTPs)

Water issue adressed: Too dirty
How many stories can be present in a smile? Well, this one is the story of four months of work, sleepless nights, and many hours of research! Months of study and work, various models, and attempts are represented in this photo! It was taken moments after we made the fourth test of this filter model, and it was the best result! As you can imagine, this smile represents a lot in my life!

Microplastic contamination is growing in the environment, given the ubiquity of plastic materials in our society’s daily lives. Studies have found these microparticles in water treatment plants that do not have a specific mechanism for removing this pollutant, which results in their presence in the Water Distribution System, therefore, distributing to consumers. The purpose of this project is a solution to this demand, as developed of microplastics filtration mechanism, easy to use and accessible because of the low-priced materials, to apply in the WTPs. The system was built and tested to simulate the conditions of this environment. The simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of the designed filter, the filter achieved 80% of efficiency, and it retrains particles even smaller than 300µm.

This is how I came up with the idea for this project:

"The idea came from a desire for improvement within the water treatment process, so we identified a problem and went after possible solutions"

CONTACT WATERTANK

Ania Andersch

Programme manager ania.andersch@siwi.org +46 8 121 360 59