Anju Abraham Puthuparambil, Gokul Vijayakumar, Swapna Mohanachandran Nair Sindhu, Sankararaman Sankaranarayana Iyer
Department of Optoelectronics, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, 695581, India.
Laboratory for Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Nova Gorica, Vipavska 13, Nova Gorica, SI-5000, Slovenia.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 11;10(14):e34532. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e34532. eCollection 2024 Jul 30.
The escalating usage of paper cups and packaging materials with plastic coatings has evolved into a substantial environmental and health concern, evidenced by the report of microplastics in human blood. This research introduces an innovative laser-assisted thermal lens (TL) technique for the precise detection and measurement of microplastics, specifically those leaching from the inner plastic coatings of paper cups. Employing a multipronged approach encompassing scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, UV-visible, and Raman spectroscopy, a comprehensive investigation is conducted into the leaching of microplastics into hot water from paper cups. The thermal diffusivity (D) of water samples containing microplastics is determined using the TL technique based on 120 observations for each temperature conducted using paper cups from three distinct manufacturers. The observation of a strong correlation between the number of microplastic particles (N) and D of the water sample enabled the setting of a linear empirical relation that can be used for computing the microplastics in water at a particular temperature. The study thus proposes a surrogate method for quantifying microplastics in water using the sensitive and non-destructive TL technique.
纸杯和带有塑料涂层的包装材料使用量的不断增加，已演变成一个重大的环境和健康问题，人体血液中发现微塑料的报告就证明了这一点。本研究引入了一种创新的激光辅助热透镜（TL）技术，用于精确检测和测量微塑料，特别是那些从纸杯内部塑料涂层中浸出的微塑料。采用包括扫描电子显微镜、光学显微镜、原子力显微镜、傅里叶变换红外光谱、紫外可见光谱和拉曼光谱在内的多管齐下方法，对微塑料从纸杯浸出到热水中的情况进行了全面研究。使用TL技术，基于对来自三个不同制造商的纸杯在每个温度下进行的120次观测，测定了含有微塑料的水样的热扩散率（D）。观察到微塑料颗粒数量（N）与水样的D之间存在强相关性，从而建立了一个线性经验关系，可用于计算特定温度下水中的微塑料。因此，该研究提出了一种使用灵敏且无损的TL技术对水中微塑料进行量化的替代方法。
