Microplastics are plastics that cannot be seen with a naked eye, they are micro-sized and can be found in air, water, and soil, the particles can come from textile fibers, cigarette filters, dust from car tires, and many more. Thus being harmful to human life.
Recent research done in 2021 by ACS Applied Material & Interfaces proved a way how to destroy microplastics in the environment in water through microbots.
This research further found out that when these microbots were added to water and a little hydrogen peroxide, the microbots started to behave in a way that they attached themselves to the microplastics and started breaking them down. These microbots look like 3-D four-pointer stars and are coated with magnetic particles. In-depth when these microbots stick to the microplastic a process called ‘photocatalysis’ occurs, where when the microbots are exposed to light they become active and absorb energy then react with the environment here being water and hydrogen peroxide. Since microbots love plastics this process allows them to produce more powerful absorption which makes them more charged and faster, this then breaks down the chemical strands in the plastic molecules thus disintegrating them.
The research was done on four types of plastic and after the microbots started reacting with the microplastic, the result was that they were degrading and lost from 0.3% to 5% of their total weight. Another test showed that when the microbots were removed from the plastic they extracted to be reused 70% of the microplastic particles back with them.
As of now, large-scale deployment of these bots cannot be done as there was not sufficient enough testing done on them. Currently, they are being tested in small and closed bodies of water and on different plastics. New versions of the microbots are also being deployed to work without the chemical reaction with hydrogen peroxide.
References
- Hershberger, S. (2021, September 1). Tiny robots could clean up microplastic pollution. Scientific American. Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-robots-could-clean-up-microplastic-pollution/#:~:text=As%20the%20microrobots%20adhere%20to,on%20four%20types%20of%20plastic.