Plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, i.e., microplastics, have been detected in a number of environments. The number of studies on microplastics in marine environments, fresh water, wastewater, the atmosphere, and the human body are increasing along with a rise in the amounts of plastic materials introduced into the environment every year, all contributing to a range of health and environmental issues. Although the use of primary microplastics has been gradually reduced by recent legislation in many countries, new knowledge and data on these problems are needed to understand the overall lifecycle of secondary microplastics in particular. The aim of this review is to provide unified information on the pathways of microplastics into the environment, their degradation, and related legislation, with a special focus on the methods of their sampling, determination, and instrumental analysis. To deal with the health and environmental issues associated with the abundance of microplastics in the environment, researchers should focus on agreeing on a uniform methodology to determine the gravity of the problem through obtaining comparable data, thus leading to new and stricter legislation enforcing more sustainable plastic production and recycling, and hopefully contributing to reversing the trend of high amounts of microplastics worldwide.
Wastewater contains resources, which can be recovered for secondary use if treated properly. Besides research in zero liquid discharge solutions, the aim of the study was a simultaneous recovery of products from a wastewater treatment plant’s dewatering liquor. To be specific, we investigated a simultaneous recovery of struvite and irrigation water using electrodialysis (ED) in laboratory experiments. Two products were obtained from ED—concentrate and diluate. The concentrate was precipitated to obtain struvite. On average, 11 g of wet precipitate (including 17.58% of dry solids) were obtained from 1 L of concentrate. Crystal phases were confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), with showing 94–97% recovery of struvite, while the remaining 3–6% were identified as hazenite. The average yield of crystal struvite was 1.76 g. Both struvite and hazenite may further be used as a fertilizer. Next, we suggest using the second ED product, the diluate, as irrigation water if it meets the irrigation water requirements. Attention was paid to the concentrations of dissolved solids (DS) in diluate, which decreased by an average of 93% compared to the input values in the dewatering liquor. In line with the observed Czech or EU standards indicators, we can say that the diluate can be used in agriculture, namely as irrigation water (Category I—water suitable for irrigation).
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