2022 | Singapore | Water issue adressed: Too dirty

Removal of Copper and Microplastics from wastewater using Electrocoagulation

Microplastic (MP) and heavy metal pollution in water bodies is becoming an increasingly pressing problem in recent years. Electrocoagulation (EC) has previously been shown to be an effective treatment method to remove heavy metals and MPs from wastewater individually. This project aims to study the application of EC in removing copper and microspheres from simulated wastewater simultaneously. Our results suggest that EC can be used to remove both contaminants concurrently, and the presence of copper in wastewater increased removal efficiency of microspheres.

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

We became concerned about microplastics since microplastic pollution is everywhere and wastewater treatment plants act as a source of microplastics. This motivated us to look into how to remove microplastics from wastewater. We felt that electrocoagulation was an exciting and effective method that had recently been applied to microplastic removal.

CONTACT WATERTANK
Ania Andersch
Programme manager
+46 8 121 360 59