Production and Characterization of Polyethylene Terephthalate Nanoparticles

Abstract

Microplastic (MP) pollution represents one of the biggest environmental problems that is further exacerbated by the continuous degradation in the marine environment of MPs to nanoplastics (NPs). The most diffuse plastics in oceans are commodity polymers, mainly thermoplastics widely used for packaging, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET). However, the huge interest in the chemical vector role of micro/nanoplastics, their fate and negative effects on the environment and human health is still under discussion and the research is still sparse due also to the difficulties of sampling MPs and NPs from the environment or producing NPs in laboratory. Moreover, the research on MPs and NPs pollution relies on the availability of engineered nanoparticles similar to those present in the marine environment for toxicological, transport and adsorption studies in biological tissues as well as for wastewater remediation studies. This work aims to develop an easy, fast and scalable procedure for the production of representative model nanoplastics from PET pellets. The proposed method, based on a simple and economic milling process, has been optimized considering the peculiarities of the polymer. The results demonstrated the reliability of the method for preparing particle suspensions for aquatic microplastic research, with evident advantages compared to the present literature procedures, such as low cost, the absence of liquid nitrogen, the short production time, the high yield of the process, stability, reproducibility and polydisperse size distribution of the produced water dispersed nanometric PET.

Aqueous Dispersions of Polypropylene: Toward Reference Materials for Characterizing Nanoplastics

“…Recently, Lionetto et al reported on the production of PET nanoparticles via a stepwise grinding and sieving of PET pellets. [18] Like our observations, their work also suggests that high mechanical energy input typically causes nanoparticles to re-weld if they are not immediately colloidally stabilized. Polystyrene on the other hand is brittle at ambient conditions, which may explain the fact that re-welding processes failed to prevent the formation of PS nanoparticles in the study of Ekvall.…”

Polyethylene terephthalate nanoparticles effect on RAW 264.7 macrophage cells

“…PET in micro and nanoscale has been reported as pollutants in the environment [36] and in marine litter [37], nevertheless, there are scarce studies about their toxicity due to the difficult isolation and quantification. Recently, authors such as Magri [23], Rodriguez-Hernandez [24] and Lionetto [38] have developed some reliable strategies for producing polyethylene terephthalate nanoparticles (PET-NPs), an environmentally relevant and representative nanoplastic from plastic pollution. PET-NPs (224 ± 46 d.nm) produced by Rodriguez-Hernandez and colleagues, which maintains the ultrastructure and the chemical composition from their origin and analogous to pristine material [24], has been already used as a model in the identification and characterization of nanoplastics in environment matrices [39].…”

Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of HDPE Pipes Manufactured via Orbital Friction Stir Welding

“…An incremental trend was observed in the mechanical properties of the FS-welded sample without alteration of the crystal structure, proving the effectiveness of the proposed orbital FSW system. Using the integrated areas below the crystalline peaks A c and the broad amorphous halo A a in the XRD pattern, the degree of crystallinity ( X XRD ) was determined from the following equation [ 27 ]: …”