Microplastic discharge from a wastewater treatment plant: long term monitoring to compare two analytical techniques, LDIR and optical microscopy while also assessing the removal efficiency of a bubble curtain.

In this study we compare two parallel analytical methods while also testing a microplastics mitigation method. We assess the effectiveness of a bubble curtain to reduce microplastics in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)-effluent canal during the course of six months (>70 samples) using two analytical techniques: laser direct infrared (LDIR) and optical microscopy (OM) covering a size range of 0.02 to 5 mm.