Performance evaluation of a hyphenated laser spectroscopy system with conventional methods for microplastic analysis.

Microplastics are one of the concerning environmental pollutants because of their ubiquity. Their capability to adsorb other environmental pollutants increases the risk even further. Existing identification approaches for microplastic characterization for polymer class and their surface-adsorbed heavy metal detection require the utilization of multiple resources and expertise.

Advanced chemometric methodologies on single shot hyphenated LIBS data for rapid and reliable characterization of plastic classes.

Background: Plastic Solid Waste (PSW) sorting is a procedure of paramount importance in the mechanical recycling process of plastics waste. The major limitation of the techniques relying on physical properties of plastics is the time taken for analysis and poor accuracy. Spectroscopy has been shown to be a suitable method in plastic sorting due to its atomic and molecular characterization capabilities, and ability to give results in very short time scales.

Integrated LIBS-Raman spectroscopy: A comprehensive approach to monitor microplastics and heavy metal contamination in water resources.

The increased use of plastic products and global industrial conditions have contaminated natural resources, especially water, with pollutants such as microplastics and trace elements, including heavy metals. Hence, continuous monitoring of water samples is an urgent requirement. However, the existing microplastic-heavy metal monitoring methodologies require discrete and sophisticated sampling approaches.