National Engineering Research Center of Industrial Wastewater Detoxication and Resource Recovery, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, PR China; School of Resource and Environmental Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, PR China.
College of Carbon Neutrality Future Technology, Sichuan University, Chengdu, PR China.
Water Res. 2024 Dec 1;267:122492. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2024.122492. Epub 2024 Sep 24.
Microplastics have been identified as a potentially emerging threat to water environment and human health. Therefore, there is a pressing demand for effective strategies to remove microplastics from water. Hydrocyclone offers a rapid separation and low energy consumption alternative but require reduction of microparticle entrainment by short flow, which limits the effectiveness for small density differentials and ultralow concentrations separation. We proposed an enhanced mini-hydrocyclone with overflow microchannels (0.72 mm width) based on the active control of short flow in hydrocyclone for microplastic removal from water. The overflow microchannels effectively redirect the particles that would typically be entrained by the short flow, leading to higher separation efficiency. Simulation results show overflow microchannels effectively reduced short flow to 0.7 %, a reduction of up to 94 % compared to conventional hydrocyclones. The hydrocyclone with overflow microchannel demonstrated a removal efficiency exceeding 98 % for 8 μm plastic microbeads at ultralow concentrations (10 ppm), which is a 33.7 % improvement over conventional hydrocyclone. Compared with other methods (e.g., filtration, adsorption, coagulation) for microplastic removal, this work achieves rapid separation capability and long period operation, highlighting hydrocyclone as a promising approach for microplastic removal in industry-scale water treatment.
微塑料已被确定为对水环境和人类健康具有潜在威胁的物质。因此，迫切需要有效的策略来从水中去除微塑料。水力旋流器提供了一种快速分离和低能耗的选择，但需要通过短流来减少微粒夹带，这限制了其对小密度差和超低浓度分离的有效性。我们提出了一种基于水力旋流器中短流主动控制的增强型微型水力旋流器，带有溢流微通道（0.72 毫米宽），用于从水中去除微塑料。溢流微通道有效地改变了通常会被短流夹带的颗粒的流向，从而提高了分离效率。模拟结果表明，溢流微通道可将短流有效减少到 0.7%，与传统水力旋流器相比，减少了高达 94%。带有溢流微通道的水力旋流器在超低浓度（10ppm）下对 8μm 塑料微珠的去除效率超过 98%，比传统水力旋流器提高了 33.7%。与其他微塑料去除方法（如过滤、吸附、混凝）相比，这项工作实现了快速分离能力和长时间运行，突出了水力旋流器作为工业规模水处理中去除微塑料的一种有前途的方法。
