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303elliott t1_ird112w wrote

Reply to comment by kazyllis in Widely used sewer pipe repair technology creates and emits nanoplastics into the air by ajwhelton

My guess would be prohibitive costs. Nano plastics are tiiiinnnnyyyy, as such they are incredibly difficult to capture. Additionally, there's probably very little incentive to even try.

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SandDuner509 t1_irdf3eu wrote

Air filter might do the trick

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SpecialOops t1_irdfc1g wrote

Water capture.

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SmarkieMark t1_irdnukz wrote

r/stonerengineering

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SeeMarkFly t1_irdh41q wrote

While trying to filter tiny particles, you also catch all the bigger particles, clogging your filter up really fast.

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Bones_and_Tomes t1_irdj4p9 wrote

Water filtration might help. Bubbler?

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SeeMarkFly t1_irdjqzc wrote

A water curtain wouldn't clog up but then what? Now you have to store the contaminated water or filter particles out of the water in real-time (same problem as before but now wet).

Flushing it down the drain was the original problem.

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EmperorGeek t1_ire8dwb wrote

Saw a technique where they add something like a flocking agent to the water to cause clumping of micro plastics into manageable blobs. Don’t remember if the article discussed the super-fine particles.

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SeeMarkFly t1_iretf8c wrote

I've seen that used in filtering deep-fat fryers. A binding agent is added to the oil that clumps the small particles together. A larger mesh filter can then be used to get most of the small particle contamination.

And because the process we are talking about is NOT continuous but a short process, that would be a good solution.

Would you like some fries with that?

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EmperorGeek t1_irf31ld wrote

Mmmm … Mom says I ate enough plastic fries as a kid!

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Bones_and_Tomes t1_irdxoi6 wrote

Sure, but keeping them in the sewer is preferable to floating about in the air. Microplastics are probably better dealt with at water processing plants.

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FishinWabigoon t1_irecw8a wrote

But then we need nano filters that run the entire city's waste through them to capture these sewer repair nanoplastics. The filters would clog.

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Bones_and_Tomes t1_irer5i9 wrote

So how do we fix this problem. Obviously in an ideal world the microplastics wouldnt get into the water in the first place, so are they more destructive floating about in the air or in water?

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EmperorGeek t1_ire8hjd wrote

From the sewer they get into the ocean don’t they? (Or are at least released to the local aquifer at some point?)

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Bones_and_Tomes t1_ire9coz wrote

They should run through a water treatment plant first.

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EmperorGeek t1_ireae3w wrote

“Should” but there are a lot of storm drains that lead straight to bodies of water.

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Dry-Conference4530 t1_irdwx8d wrote

Could use a chemical to cause the particles to bind together in a holding tank.

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knselektor t1_ire2ovu wrote

congeal the particles with a gel, like clearing a consomme

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pipnina t1_ireel9c wrote

Can either boil the water off or centrifuge it perhaps?

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cheezemeister_x t1_iref9ms wrote

Multilayer filters solve this problem.

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SeeMarkFly t1_irf6fts wrote

Yea, that would work.

I have always worked on large continuous air flow systems and multiple filters are even more expensive than single filters for my applications. Hence I shy away from them.

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Lizasmuffmuncher t1_ireazmy wrote

If micro-plastics are that small just imagine these nano-plastics!

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303elliott t1_irenst6 wrote

If you think that's bad, wait until you hear about Planck plastics!

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