J.eti.2020.101013 Methods

Environmental Technology & Innovation 19 (2020) 101013
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Environmental Technology & Innovation

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Microplastics pollution in wastewater: Characteristics,

occurrence and removal technologies
∗ ∗∗
Xuan-Thanh Bui a,b , , Thi-Dieu-Hien Vo c , , Phuong-Thao Nguyen a,b ,
Van-Truc Nguyen d , Thanh-Son Dao a,b , Phuoc-Dan Nguyen d
a
VNU-HCM Key Laboratory of Advanced Waste Treatment Technology, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, Linh Trung
ward, Thu Duc district, Viet Nam
b
Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), Ho Chi Minh
City 700000, Viet Nam
c
Faculty of Environmental and Food Engineering, Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
d
CARE, Ho Chi Minh University of Technology, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Viet Nam
article info a b s t r a c t
Article history: Microplastics (MPs) are one of the emerging pollutants that have gained the most
Received 29 April 2020 attention recently. The widespread distribution and potential for its adverse impact on
Received in revised form 19 June 2020 human health and the ecosystem have been warned. MPs have been introduced into
Accepted 19 June 2020
the environment by various routes such as direct disposal through human activities,
Available online xxxx
textile industry and wastewater treatment systems. Recently, the reduction of MPs from
Keywords: wastewater treatment systems has been attracted much attention from the scientific
Microplastics (MPs) community. There have been many reviews on the emission sources, distribution and
Membrane bioreactor (MBR) impacts of MP in environment. However, the better understanding of MPs removal
Coagulation efficiencies by different wastewater treatment technologies has not been reviewed
Rapid sand filter
and discussed. Therefore, the objective of this review is to provide technologies to be
Dissolved air flotation (DAF)
applied in MPs removal. In addition, basic knowledge about MPs in water body such as
characteristics, emission sources, transport path and its impact on human health and the
ecosystem was also presented and discussed. This review is expected to provide useful
information to scientists as well as decision makers to continue researching, developing
and proposing an effective strategy to control and prevent water pollution from MPs.
© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
2. Characteristics of microplastics and their emission sources............................................................................................................... 3
3. Fate and transport of microplastics in the environment .................................................................................................................... 6
4. How microplastics influence human health and ecosystem............................................................................................................... 6
5. Removal technologies for microplastics ................................................................................................................................................ 8
5.1. Grit chamber/primary sedimentation ...................................................................................................................................... 8
5.2. Dissolved air flotation ................................................................................................................................................................ 10
5.3. Coagulation .................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
5.4. Filtration process ......................................................................................................................................................................... 11
∗ Correspondence to: VNU-HCM Key Laboratory of Advanced Waste Treatment Technology, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT),
Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Viet Nam.
∗∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: bxthanh@hcmut.edu.vn (X.-T. Bui), vtdhien@ntt.edu.vn (T.-D.-H. Vo).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2020.101013
2352-1864/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2 X.-T. Bui, T.-D.-H. Vo, P.-T. Nguyen et al. / Environmental Technology & Innovation 19 (2020) 101013
5.4.1. Sand filter...................................................................................................................................................................... 11

5.4.2. Rapid sand filter ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
5.4.3. Granular activated carbon filtration........................................................................................................................... 12
5.4.4. Membrane disc-filter ................................................................................................................................................... 12
5.5. Conventional activated sludge process ..................................................................................................................................... 12
5.6. Membrane bioreactor ................................................................................................................................................................. 12
5.7. Ozonation .................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
6. Conclusions and future perspectives...................................................................................................................................................... 13
Declaration of competing interest.......................................................................................................................................................... 13
Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
References ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14
1. Introduction
According to Statista’s statistical data, global plastic production increased rapidly from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to
359 million tons in 2018. Although recovered after consumption, a large amount of plastics is still released into the
environment. In Europe, for example, plastic collection increased by 19% in 2018 compared to 2006. However, there
were still about 25% buried in landfills. According to report of UNEP (2020), only about 9% of plastic is recycled, 12%
is incinerated and 79% is buried or discharged into the environment. In 2014, there were between 15 and 51 trillion
microplastic particles estimated in the world’s oceans, weighing from 93,000 to 236,000 tons (Ioakeimidis et al., 2016).
From the reviewing data, Barnes et al. (2009) has also shown that there has been a steady increase in the number of
microplastics (MPs) in seawater over the last decade but there is an increasing trend on the shorelines. MP pollution
is a newly emerged matter upon the world because of the wide consumption of plastics in most aspects of human
activities as well as domestic and industrial wastewater without proper treatment. MPs worldwide distribution in aquatic
environment was discovered in the recent years, for example, Northeast Atlantic ocean was discovered in 89% of water
contains a concentration of 2.46 particles/m3 , also 95% of Arctic Polar Waters contains MPs concentration of 0–1.31
particles/m3 (Lusher et al., 2014); Jade Bay, South–North Sea contains 1.77 particles/m3 (Dubaish and Liebezeit, 2013).
Due to the widely spread of MPs, especially in aquatic environment, marine life is threatened by being exposed to MPs
with different impact levels depending on the possibility of leaching toxic chemicals from plastics additives and adsorbed
pollutants such as metals, pesticides or persistent organic pollutants (Fossi et al., 2014; van Emmerik et al., 2018). Not
only MPs are toxic but it can also serve as reservoirs for pathogen transmission and threatening marine life (Kor and
Mehdinia, 2020). The phenomenon happened mostly in marine habitats and yet to be known about the specific effect
on human health. However, marine lives are in the middle of the food chain and serve as a major source of nutrients
for human daily consumption. As suggested by Goldstein and Goodwin (2013), MPs can be considered as reservoirs
for pathogen transmission so marine lives if containing pathogens of any kind, then, can also be a threat to human
consumption and health can be at great risk. Some previous studies showed that the microorganism was negatively
affected by the environment containing MPs (Zhao et al., 2020; Ziajahromi et al., 2018). To mitigate this risk, in addition
to a worldwide campaign to reduce plastic use and disposal, the ability to remove microplastics from municipal/industrial
wastewater treatment systems is also an important contribution. MPs were eliminated by many different technologies,
e.g. grit chamber and primary sedimentation (Bayo et al., 2020; Lares et al., 2018; Murphy et al., 2016), dissolved air
flotation (Talvitie et al., 2017a,b), coagulation (Hidayaturrahman and Lee, 2019), sand filtration (Wang et al., 2020), rapid
(gravity) sand filter (RSF) (Hidayaturrahman and Lee, 2019), granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration (Wang et al.,
2020), membrane disc-filters (DF) (Talvitie et al., 2017a), activated sludge process (Edo et al., 2020; Magni et al., 2019),
membrane bioreactor (MBR) (Lares et al., 2018), and ozonation (Chen et al., 2018). Up to now, some reviews related
to MP removal technology from water solution have been published. For example, Ziajahromi et al. (2016) presented a
review of MPs traces in the output of wastewater treatment systems, the interaction of MPs with organic matters and
potential risks to the ecosystem. Kang et al. (2018) also conducted an overview of the shape, size, sources and presence
of MPs in the influent and effluent of the various urban wastewater treatment systems. Zhang and Chen (2019) had an
overview of the impacts of MPs on the performance of the wastewater and sludge treatment systems. Hu et al. (2019)
reviewed on sources, sampling, pre-treatment of sample, characteristics for MPs and their occurrence in the effluent
and sludge of wastewater treatment systems. In the review of Sun et al. (2019), analytical techniques, the presence of
MPs in the inputs and outputs of wastewater treatment systems in different countries were discussed. In general, the
elimination of MPs for each technology has not been adequately clarified. Thus, in order to have more overview of MPs
pollution in the wastewater treatment processes, the characteristics and presence of MPs, the removal efficiency as well
as challenges of each MPs treatment technology were presented in the study. Moreover, characteristics, emission sources,
transport, influence human health and ecosystem of MPs were also discussed. This review was expected to provide useful
information for a suggestion of improvement and highlight the further research areas of MPs removal technologies that
are possibly to be employed in wastewater treatment.
X.-T. Bui, T.-D.-H. Vo, P.-T. Nguyen et al. / Environmental Technology & Innovation 19 (2020) 101013 3
Fig. 1. Pathways of microplastics transport.
2. Characteristics of microplastics and their emission sources
Potential hazards and risks of MPs to the environment together with human health depends on their physical and
chemical properties. MPs are defined as plastics with a size smaller than 5 mm (small MPs: 0.3–1 mm and large MPs:
1–5 mm)(Lebreton et al., 2018). MPs can be classified into two main types primary and secondary. Primary MPs in the
environment are commonly emitted from MP-containing products (e.g. toothpaste, soaps, cosmetics, cleansers, etc.), while
secondary MPs were decay from primary ones and broken from larger products (e.g. clothing, plastic packaging, toys, etc.)
(Rochman et al., 2016). MPs particles were also categorized based on the microplastics forms such as fragments, pellets,
fibers, films and foams. The data in Table 1 show clearly the distribution of MPs in some countries around the world. The
fiber types dominate over the other type of MPs, namely up to 99% in Vietnam and 100% in Netherland. For Vietnam, the
reason why having this domination is that the consequence of washing activities by people who live nearby. Indeed, it
was estimated that about 115–164 x 1012 particles of artificial fibrous MPs were annually discharged into the water body
of the Saigon River (Strady et al., 2020). For Netherland, the major source of microplastics pollution was the wastewater
treatment plant and biological soil, which was derived from the sewage sludge used in agriculture and forestry (Leslie
et al., 2017). The data of foam as well as film was very low at around 5 to 10%. It is quite different from fragment and
pellet types which are showed between 25 and 70%. In general, the most abundant contributions to MPs are fragment
and fiber in US, China, Canada, Scotland and South Korea; fragment, pellet and fiber in Belgium; fragment in Scotland
and Swiss; pellet in France, Finland, Sweden; fiber in America, Australia, Canada, India, Netherland, UK, Vietnam. MPs are
made from different polymers such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyethylene terephthalate
(PET), low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyether urethane, polyamide, acrylamide, polyacrylates, alkyd resin, polyvinyl
chloride (PVC), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyether sulfone (PES) (Table 1). The particle size, shape and MP type are very
vital for analyzing the impaction on the biota (Montes-Burgos et al., 2010). Due to their shape together with flotation
characteristics, MPs were eaten by marine animals (Lambert et al., 2017). MP types affects the ecosystem at different levels.
For example, PP and PE exhibited much higher toxicity than PVC when studying exposure to Daphnia magna reported by
Renzi et al. (2019).
From the summarized data (Table 1), it is shown that high-concentration MPs were mainly derived from the effluent
of wastewater treatment systems, textiles washing and fishing activities. In particular, in addition to these main sources,
direct waste discharge to surface water also contributed significantly to MPs in some areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
(Lahens et al., 2018). In addition, the characteristics of the living area also affect MPs emissions. For example, crowded
urban areas with higher living standards might be more sources and emissions of MPs than rural areas (Eckert et al.,
2018). However, in urban areas, wastewater and solid waste treatment systems are better so MPs emissions will be
limited. Indeed, Yin et al. (2020) compares the emissions of MPs in urban and rural areas. The results show that due
to less effective environmental protection measures, higher MPs are detected in rural areas. Thus, anthropogenic sources
or human activities play an important role in MPs pollution.
4
Table 1
Distribution of MPs in surface water in some countries in the world.
Country Location Type of MPs (%) Total Type of Size (µm) Sources of MPs References
(particle/litter) polymer
Fragment Pellet Fiber Film Foam
<5 <10 <20 >1000
X.-T. Bui, T.-D.-H. Vo, P.-T. Nguyen et al. / Environmental Technology & Innovation 19 (2020) 101013
America Patagonia – 65–90 0.0009 ± 0.0006 PET, PU, PP, PS Urban settlements, textiles, Alfonso et al. (2020)
fisheries
Australia Sydney 0 20 80 0 0 12 Acrylic, 25–500 Soap, washing liquid, paint Ziajahromi et al. (2017)
Polyester, PA from WWTP
Belgium Nieuwpoort 25 30 34 11 0 390.7 PP, Nylon, PVA, 38–1000 Recreational boating activities, Claessens et al. (2011)
PE, PS plastics industry
Oostende 25 33 41 1 0 186.2 38–1000
Zeebrugge 27 36 37 0 0 123.9 38–1000
Belgian 0 12 87 1 0 269.5 38–1000
Koksijde-Bad 0 6 89 4 1 95.9 38–1000
Knokke 0 7 91 2 0 124.2 38–1000
Canada Metro Vancouver 27 – 70 – – 31.1 ± 6.7 PS, PC, PA, 1–65 Municipal WWTP Gies et al. (2018)
Polyester
China Shandong 69 0.1 1 0.2 27.8 740.1 PE, PP, PS, PU < 1000 Human activities on the coastal Zhou et al. (2018)
beaches, fishing, maricultural
activities
Yangtze Estuary 11.6 0.2 79.1 9.1 0 4137.3 ± 2461.5 500–5000
East China Sea 14.7 0 83.2 2.1 0 0.167 ± 0.138 500–5000
China Taihu Lake – – > 60 – – 3.4 Cellophane, 333–1000 Washing, fishing industry Su et al. (2016)
PET, PP, PS
Finland Baltic Sea 0 70.49 29.51 0 0 630 PE, PP, PS, PU, 20–200 Municipal WWTP Talvitie et al. (2015)
PA, PAc, AA,
AR, PVC, PVA,
PES
France Aris 0 100 0 0 0 260–320 – 100–5000 Washing, traffic on the river Dris et al. (2015)
India Arabian Bay 1 0 94 5 0 411.482 LDPE, PET, PE, 80–300 WWTP, fishing lines, nets and Abayomi et al. (2017)
PP ropes
Korea South Korea 31.43 18.1 46.66 3.81 0 4200 PAHs, PCBs > 1.2 Personal care products, laundry Lee and Kim (2018)
Netherland Dutch North Sea – – 100 – – 68–910 PS > 300 WWTP, sewage sludge Leslie et al. (2017)
Coast
Scotland Clyde River 67.3 3 18.5 9.9 1.3 15.7 Alkyds, Acrylic, > 65 WWTP, personal care products Murphy et al. (2016)
Polyester, PSA,
PU, PA, PP, PE,
PET
Singapore St John Island, – – – – – 0–0.2 PE, PP, PS, > 2.6 Industrial, recreational and Ng and Obbard (2006)
Changi, Pasir Ris, Nylon, PVA, shipping activities
East Coast, Acrylonitrile,
Kallang River, Butadiene
Sembawang and
Sentosa Island
(continued on next page)
X.-T. Bui, T.-D.-H. Vo, P.-T. Nguyen et al. / Environmental Technology & Innovation 19 (2020) 101013
Table 1 (continued).
Country Location Type of MPs (%) Total Type of Size (µm) Sources of MPs References
(particle/litter) polymer
Fragment Pellet Fiber Film Foam
Sweden Sweden 17.68 70.86 0 11.46 0 15.1 ± 0.89 Polyester, PE, > 300 – Magnusson (2014)
PP
Swiss Swiss 61 2 10 13 14 0.0014 ± 0.0034 PE, PP, PS, PVC <1000 – Faure et al. (2015)
UK English Channel 19 – 75 – 6 0.0103 ± 0.002 Acrylic, BP, 100 Washing, atmospheric fallout, Lindeque et al. (2020)
& Plymouth Polyester, PA, snow melts
Sound PE, PVC
19 – 81 – 0 0.0041 ± 0.001 300
17 – 83 – 0 0.0010 ± 0.0002 500
USA Gulf of Maine 16 – 84 – – 0.006 ± 0.001 – 100 Washing, atmospheric fallout, Lindeque et al. (2020)
snow melts
16 – 84 – – 0.0006 ± 0.003 – 500
USA San Francisco 9 0 90 0 1 456.691 PE, PP, PS 125–355 Municipal WWTP Mason et al. (2016)
Bay
Lake Erie 53 0 40 3 4 64.487 125–355
Lake Champlain 65 6 13 13 3 52.773 125–355
Lake Michigan 53 2 39 5 1 2251.99 125–355
USA Southern of 6 10.6 0.2 – 82.7 12.932 PS 1000–4750 – Moore et al. (2011)
California
Vietnam Bach Dang 1 0 99 0 0 419.009 PE, PP, PS, PET 50–2250 Textile & apparel industry, Lahens et al. (2018)
WWTP, directly waste
discharge
Ben Cui 1 0 99 0 0 172.01 50–3050
Nhieu Loc 1 0 99 0 0 290.019 50–4650
Lo Gom 1 0 99 0 0 472.223 50–3650
Kenh Te 1 0 99 0 0 519.142 50–3850
Tau Hu 1 0 99 0 0 270.036 50–4650
Notes: AA — acrylamide, AR — alkyd resin, BP — biopolymer, LDPE — low density polyethylene, PA — polyamide, PAc — polyacrylates, PAHs — polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons, PC - polycarbonate, PCBs —
polychlorinated biphenyls, PE — polyethylene, PES — polyether sulfone, PET — polyethylene terephthalate, PP — polypropylene, PS — polystyrene, PSA – polystyrene acrylic, PVA — polyvinyl alcohol, PVC —
polyvinyl chloride, PU — polyether urethane, WWTP — wastewater treatment plant.
5
3. Fate and transport of microplastics in the environment
Based on the origin, plastic is divided into two main categories such as primary and secondary. For instance, the
primary MPs usually from domestic products which are from personal care products, facial scrubs, toothpaste, etc. are
transported into wastewater treatment plants before entering to the rivers or ocean as well. Secondary plastics are
decomposed from large pieces of plastic under physicochemical and biological conditions. These types of plastics are
eliminated unconsciously (illegal disposal) to rivers, canals or even lands by human activities. Plastics are released to our
environments such in many ways (see Fig. 1).
The first phase of MPs transport begins with the disposal of consumer products on land. Some of the evidences suggest
that littering and inefficient waste management are the majority contribution to release MPs products to land like losing in
the waste disposal process, overflow of the landfill sites, etc. (Lechner and Ramler, 2015). Plastic is also used extensively in
agricultural production, its role as a covering material for crop protection. Moreover, MPs can be infected immediately to
the soil through sewage sludge which is used to agricultural land as well as fertilizer. The wastewater treatment systems
might remove effectively the MPs up to 98% and large amounts of MPs were retained in the sludge (Carr et al., 2016). In
fact, there are nearly 125 to 850 tons of MPs per million people each year are added in agricultural soils by using sewage
sludge in Europe (Nizzetto et al., 2016). In regions where plastic transport to water bodies such as rivers or oceans is
not circulated, vast accumulation in sediment could occur (Horton and Dixon, 2018). Nonetheless, there are only but a
few studies on the subject of MPs accumulation over land areas, or the connection between MP’s abundance and input
routes. Consequently, it is almost impossible to support the direct correlation between MPs accumulations with specific
environmental characteristics of human activities.
The second site where MPs are present is surface water (river, lake, pond, canal, etc.) representing the most complex
system involved in MPs transport and storage. In surface water, MPs almost represent in the secondary types because of
the disaggregation of larger plastic (Horton and Dixon, 2018). Larger plastic pieces are moved in surface water by human
activities such as inadequate waste disposal, illegal littering, etc. Despite the high efficiency of MPs removing (Murphy
et al., 2016), MPs still present at the outlet of the system. MPs in the effluent wastewater were received by rivers and
canals before being transported to the ocean by the tidal cycle (Jambeck et al., 2015). As the result, the high concentration
of MPs was found in the ocean because it is extensively thought about the final stage of MPs transportation (Law and
Thompson, 2014). Furthermore, the inputs from rivers, MPs can be also entered immediately to the ocean by carelessness
maritime or fishing gear such as old fishing gear and illegal dumping (Horton and Dixon, 2018). Schmidt et al. (2017)
reported that more than 90% of all plastic waste in the ocean comes from 10 rivers (eight of which are in Asia).
4. How microplastics influence human health and ecosystem
Nowadays, plastic pollution is one of the most serious environmental issues worldwide (Chae and An, 2017) and its
occurrence and impacts are of environmental, ecological and human health concerns. There have been more investigations
on the influences of microplastics than macroplastics on organism focusing on aquatic animals. Large organisms (e.g. large
fish, reptiles, birds, mammals) are impacted by both micro- and macroplastics whereas smaller organisms (e.g. zooplank-
ton, worms, coral, crustaceans, mollusks, small fish) are mainly affected by microplastics. On the contrary, more species
in the water environment are influenced by microplastics than by macroplastics because of the higher species richness
of smaller organisms in aquatic ecosystems.
Macroplastics cause negative influences on vertebrates such as mammals, reptiles, and water birds by preventing their
behaviors (e.g. swimming, breathing, feeding), diminishing survival capacity and inhibiting growth and reproduction.
Ramesh et al. (2019) documented the impacts of macroplastics on two sea turtle including the teared tissue of arms, and
death as the consequence of the entanglement by fish net and plastics dumped into the ocean. Turtles could consume
macroplastics because they may misidentify the plastics with their food. They are also trapped and entangled by large
pieces of plastics and fish net consequently the reduction of food uptake and predator avoidance (Li et al., 2016; Nelms
et al., 2016). The occurrence of plastic particles (both micro and macro sizes) in many sea bird, fish and mammal species
from tropical, temperate and polar regions was well reviewed by Li et al. (2016). Upon the presence of macroplastics
in animals, organisms faced the digestive system and obstruction damage and even suffered the reproductive ability of
the female because of the block of intestine and cloaca, respectively (Nelms et al., 2016). The death of sea mammals
(e.g. the manatee) was believed as the consequence of its digestive tract blockage by plastics (Li et al., 2016). The secondary
effects of macroplastics consumption in large animals would be related to the leach of the contaminants such as trace
metals and other toxins (e.g. persistent organic pollutants) on the plastics to the digestive tracts which would induce
the developmental and reproductive abnormalities in animals (Nelms et al., 2016). Plastics in beach also known as a
factor contributing to the sand temperature decrease which strongly influences on the alteration of sex ratios of reptiles
(e.g. turtles) laying their eggs in beaches (Nelms et al., 2016).
Microplastics enter the aquatic biota by many different ways such as filter feeding, suspension feeding, consumption
prey exposed to microplastics or via direct ingestion (Anderson et al., 2016). Aquatic animals such as zooplankton,
fish and water birds could ingest microplastics, and plastic particles could be transferred across trophic levels and
biomagnification through the food chain (e.g. reviewed by Eerkes-Medrano et al., 2015). The smaller sizes of microplastics
tend to be consumed more by aquatic animals where larger animals could consume and accumulate more plastics in their
bodies (Beer et al., 2018). Microplastics were found in a variety of aquatic organisms from the first consumers to the
top predators such as coral, polychaete worms, sea cucumbers, zooplankton, crustaceans, mollusks, fish, reptile, water
birds and sea mammals of which some species are capable of excretion or egestion, while others retain, accumulate,
and immobilize microplastics into their circulation (Anderson et al., 2016; Li et al., 2016; Maaghloud et al., 2020). The
consumption of microplastics may cause mechanical effects such as attachment of the polymer to the external surface
thereby, hindering mobility and clogging of the digestive tract, or the effects could be chemical such as inflammation,
hepatic stress, decreased growth (Auta et al., 2017). The potential toxicity of microplastics seems to be associated with the
three pathways (i) stress of ingestion (physical blockage, energy expenditure for egestion), (ii) leakage of additives from
plastic (plasticizers), and (iii) exposure to contaminants associated with microplastics (e.g. persistent organic pollutants)
(Anderson et al., 2016). On the other hand, plastics may directly or indirectly affect abiotic qualities in environment by
alteration of light penetration into water column and sedimentation characteristics (Eerkes-Medrano et al., 2015).
Plastics can contain a great number of additives e.g. bisphenol A and phthalates, among others which cause molecular
and whole-organism effects in organisms (Cole et al., 2011). Additionally, plastic particles in aquatic environment could
be associated with trace metals e.g. Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Co (Holmes et al., 2014) consequently increasing exposure
concentrations of trace metals to aquatic animals feeding on the particles. Microplastics are hydrophobic and have large
surface areas, allowing them to accumulate organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polybrominated
diphenylethers, polychlorinated biphenyls and dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (Anderson et al., 2016). Therefore, plastic
debris could concentrate harmful pollutants up to one million times higher than that of the surrounding aquatic
environment. Plastics could also serve themselves as substrates for bacterial communities hence becoming vectors for
pathogens in aquatic ecosystems (Anderson et al., 2016). Therefore, microplastics have a wide range of impacts on
organisms at many different levels such as genetic structure and expression, and biochemical activities (e.g. neuro,
immune response, oxidative and energy-related enzyme activities), behavioral changes (e.g. swimming, feeding, olfactory
senses, inflammatory responses and other normal activities), alteration of life history traits (e.g. development, survival,
reproduction, size and weight), health inhibition (e.g. malformation, diseases) (Auta et al., 2017; Barboza et al., 2018).
As mentioned, humans are the consumers of seafood products, which accumulate large amounts of MPs. According to
database reported by FAO (2016), 11 species of over 25 species contain MPs in the global sea fishing. Browne et al. (2010)
have resulted that the number of microplastics ingested by organisms from the coastal food web were more than those
from offshore habitats. MPs could be easily ingested by low trophic fauna and marine invertebrates due to prey item
resemblance about the size and color (Wright et al., 2013). There have been many scientific investigations into how MPs
impact on marine life (Botterell et al., 2019; Choi et al., 2020). MPs have been detected in the stomachs of fish (Baalkhuyur
et al., 2020; Dantas et al., 2020), in gut of lobster (Hara et al., 2020; Potocka et al., 2019), in the gastrointestinal tract,
liver and gills of in seabreams (Savoca et al., 2019), anchovies (Collard et al., 2017), sardines (Savoca et al., 2020), finfish
and shellfish (Baechler et al., 2020), demersal (Koongolla et al., 2020), and in the gastrointestinal tract of shrimp (Hossain
et al., 2020).
The accumulation and ingestion MPs in marine organisms could lead to some detrimental effects to their health, which
are reported in the literature of (Gregory, 2009) impacts including reduced reproductive fitness, drowning, diminished
predator avoidance, impairment of feeding ability, the potential transfer of damaging toxicants from seawater and
eventually death. The accumulation of MPs within marine invertebrates could be influenced by blockage of the digestion
system (Wright et al., 2013). One experiment was shown the capacity accumulate of MPs in the digestive cavity and
tubules of bivalve mollusks, which ate 20 µm PS microspherules, still endured up to 48 h (Browne et al., 2008). Besides
that, the algal species named Chlorella and Scenedesmus have been prevented during photosynthesis due to the external
adsorption of MPs producing the physical blockage of light and air (Bhattacharya et al., 2010). Nevertheless, this highlights
the ability of digestion or absorption MPs due to the absence of enzymatic pathways to break down any synthetic polymers
in organisms (Andrady, 2011). Table 2 presents occurrence of MPs in some marine organisms.
Even though scientific evidence damages from the presence of MPs in the marine food chain, there is not enough
information to prove the subsequent effects of microplastics on human health. However, MPs were found in a wide
variety of human food items such as canned sardines, carp and sprats (Hanachi et al., 2019; Karami et al., 2018; Rainieri
and Barranco, 2019), salt (Lee et al., 2019; Peixoto et al., 2019; Selvam et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020), beer (Kosuth et al.,
2018; Liebezeit and Liebezeit, 2014), seaweed (Li et al., 2020b), seafood (Smith et al., 2018), honey and sugar (Liebezeit and
Liebezeit, 2013), etc. Specifically, according to Karami et al. (2018), each year human consumed about 1 to 5 MPs particles
from fish canned products. Based on aggregate data of Peixoto et al. (2019), sea salt in different countries contains up
to 19,800 MPs particles per kg. MPs with 243–684 particles/L were also found in drinking water (Eerkes-Medrano et al.,
2019).
Alternatively, scientists hypothesize the absorption of MPs relating to their size. The size of smaller than 150 µm may
be easily absorbed and could move actively from the gut cavity to the lymph and circulatory system causing systemic
exposure (Barboza et al., 2018). Nevertheless, airborne MPs should be noted that the ability of humans easily approaches
Table 2
Occurrence of microplastics (MPs) in some marine organisms.
Species MPs load MPs size References
Ochrophyta
Skeletonema costatum 3.4 × 106 MP/mL 1 µm Zhang et al. (2017)
Mollusca
Mytilus edulis 0.36 ± 0.07 MP/g.w.w >5 µ m Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen (2014)
Mytilus edulis 0.2 ± 0.3 MP/g.w.w >5 µ m Van Cauwenberghe et al. (2015)
Mytilus edulis 3.0 ± 0.9 MP/g.w.w – Catarino et al. (2018)
Crassostrea gigas 0.47 ± 0.16 MP/g.w.w 0.8 µm Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen (2014)
Crassostrea gigas 96.8 MP/mL 2–6 µm Sussarellu et al. (2016)
Ostrea edulis 0.075 MP/mL 0.48–316 µm Green (2016)
Perna viridis 6.0 × 105 MP/mL 1–50 µm Rist et al. (2016)
Brachionus koreanus 7.3 × 108 MP/mL 0.05–6 µm Jeong et al. (2016)
Scrobicularia plana 2 MP/mL 20 µm Ribeiro et al. (2017)
Pinctada margaritifera 0.16 MP/mL 6–10 µm Gardon et al. (2018)
Modiolus modiolus 0.086 ± 0.031 MP/g.w.w – Catarino et al. (2018)
Arthropoda
Euphausia pacifica 0.068 MP/organism 816 ± 108 µm Desforges et al. (2015)
Neocalanus cristatus 0.026 MP/organism 556 ± 149 µm Desforges et al. (2015)
Carngon crangon 0.64 ± 0.53 MP/g.w.w >20 µm Devriese et al. (2015)
Nephrops norvegicus 0.83 MP/organism <5 mm Murray and Cowie (2011)
Tigriopus japonicus 2.1 × 105 MP/mL 0.05–6 µm Lee et al. (2013)
Centropages typicus 2000 MP/mL 0.4–30.6 µm Cole et al. (2013)
Calanus helgolandicus 37.5 MP/mL 20 µm Cole et al. (2015)
Parvocalanus crassirostris 5000 MP/mL 5–10 µm Heindler et al. (2017)
Echinodermata
Tripneustes gratilla 100 MP/mL 10–45 µm Kaposi et al. (2014)
Paracentrtus lividus 500 MP/mL – Martínez-Gómez et al. (2017)
Chordata
Lepas spp 33.5% of organisms >0.5 mm Goldstein and Goodwin (2013)
Annelida
Arenicola marina 1.2 ± 2.8 MP/g.w.w >5 µm Van Cauwenberghe et al. (2015)
Mixed fish species
Scomber japonicus 0.27 ± 0.63 MP/fish 0.217–4.81 mm Neves et al. (2015)
Planktivorous fish 1–83 MP/fish 1.0–2.79 mm Boerger et al. (2010)
Clupea harengus Scober scombrus 0.19 ± 0.61 MP/fish 180 µm–5 mm Rummel et al. (2016)
and ingest microplastic fibers from domestic dust activities which are higher than the consumption of mussels (Catarino
et al., 2018; Prata, 2018). Therefore, there are several challenges to explore the real effects of MPs on the human body.
5. Removal technologies for microplastics
This study was based on the various criteria analysis of the MPs removal efficiency of present treatments, which
is mainly applied to remove MPs. It also highlights the advantages and disadvantages of friendly environmental,
technological and economic aspects of each method such as skimming and sedimentation, coagulation, ozonation, rapid
sand filter, dissolved air flotation, conventional activated sludge and membrane bioreactor (MBR) (Table 3).
5.1. Grit chamber/primary sedimentation
Grit chamber and primary sedimentation are the first stage of the wastewater treatment plant. Thanks to aeration
process at the back of the grit chamber, MPs are largely removed at this primary treatment stage by surface skimming and
sedimentation. Indeed, about 41% of MPs are eliminated by this phase (Liu et al., 2019). The MPs concentration in influent
and effluent in this study were 79.9 MPs/L and 47.4 MPs/L, respectively. Similarly, it was demonstrated that relatively
high efficiencies (57%–64% in Hidayaturrahman and Lee, 2019 and 66% in Ziajahromi et al., 2017) were achieved in this
stage for MPs removal. Murphy et al. (2016) also investigated this performance of the primary stage at the municipal
wastewater treatment plant in Glasgow, Scotland. After passing this stage, average MPs decreased from 15.7 MPs/L to
3.4 MPs/L with removal efficiency of approx. 78%. Based on the results of Bayo et al. (2020), about 74% of MPs were
eliminated during the primary stage in the urban wastewater treatment plant in Spain. However, high efficiency (92%)
of MPs removal was obtained in the primary stage of major wastewater treatment plant in Canada. Most of MPs were
in the fibrous forms (Gies et al., 2018). Especially, in the study of Lares et al. (2018), most of MPs (particularly in the
form of fiber) were eliminated (99%) at this primary stage with the input concentration of 57.6 MPs/L. The reason for
the high efficiency achieved in this study might be due to more than 96% MPs being fibrous form. From the results of
Hidayaturrahman and Lee (2019), the primary treatment stage retained more fibrous MPs (76%–92%) than other types
Table 3
Performance of treatment technologies for microplastics (MPs) removal.
Technologies/Operating conditions Location Influent (MPs/L) Effluent (MPs/L) Removal (%) References
Grit chamber/primary sedimentation:
NA Spain 12.43 ± 2.70 3.21 ± 0.50 74.0 Bayo et al. (2020)
Passing through a 6-mm screen mesh China 79.9 47.4 40.7 Liu et al. (2019)
before grit chamber
NA South Korea 4200 1568 62.7 Hidayaturrahman and
Lee (2019)
NA South Korea 31,400 12,580 56.8 Hidayaturrahman and
Lee (2019)
NA South of Korea 5840 2080 64.4 Hidayaturrahman and
Lee (2019)
Passing through a 6-mm screen mesh Finland 57.6 ± 12.4 0.6 ± 0.2 99.0 Lares et al. (2018)
before grit chamber
NA Columbia 31.1 ± 6.7 2.6 ± 1.4 91.7 Gies et al. (2018)
Passing through a 3-mm screen mesh or a Australia 1.44 0.48 66.0 Ziajahromi et al.
6-mm screen mesh before grit chamber (2017)
Polyacrylamide as coagulant added before Scotland 15.70 ± 5.23 3.40 ± 0.28 78.3 Murphy et al. (2016)
primary sedimentation
Dissolved air flotation — DAF :
Flocculant: PAC of 40 mg/L Finland 2.0 0.1 95.0 Talvitie et al. (2017a)
Coagulation:
MPs with size > 10 µm China 1334 ± 459 1 ± 1 >99.0 Wang et al. (2020)
MPs with size 5–10 µm China 1520 ± 258 136 ± 22 44.5–75.0 Wang et al. (2020)
Coagulants: PAC of avg. 32.4 mg/L South Korea 710 164 53.8 Hidayaturrahman and
Lee (2019)
Lee (2019)
Lee (2019)
AlCl3 · 6H2 O of 13.5 mg/L Al; pH of 7; PE China NA NA 8.3 Ma et al. (2019b)
(size < 0.5 mm)
AlCl3 · 6H2 O of 135 mg/L Al; pH of 6; PE China NA NA 27.5 Ma et al. (2019b)
(size < 0.5 mm)
(size < 0.5 mm)
AlCl3 · 6H2 O of 135 mg/L Al; pH of 7; China NA NA 61.2 Ma et al. (2019b)
anionic PAM of 15 mg/L; PE (size <
0.5 mm)
AlCl3 · 6H2 O of 135 mg/L Al; pH of 7; China NA NA 45.3 Ma et al. (2019b)
cationic PAM of 15 mg/L; PE (size <
0.5 mm)
(size < 0.5 mm)
(size < 0.5 mm)
FeCl3 · 6H2 O of 2 mmol/L; pH of 6; PE China NA NA 11.6 Ma et al. (2019a)
(size < 0.5 mm)
(size < 0.5 mm)
(size < 0.5 mm)
FeCl3 · 6H2 O of 2 mmol/L; pH of 6; anionic China NA NA 90.9 Ma et al. (2019a)
PAM of 15 mg/L; PE (size < 0.5 mm)
Sand filtration:
NA China 3472 ± 178 2230 ± 91 29.0–41.0 Wang et al. (2020)
NA Italy 0.9 ± 0.3 0.4 ± 0.1 56.0 Magni et al. (2019)
Rapid sand filter (RSF):
Diameter of sand of 0.8–1.2 mm; HRT of South Korea 215 66 74.0 Hidayaturrahman and
1.08 h Lee (2019)
Filtration bed: 1 m of gravel (size of Finland 0.7 0.02 97.0 Talvitie et al. (2017a)
3–5 mm) + 0.5 m of quartz (size of
0.1–0.5 mm)
Granular activated carbon (GAC):
Coagulants: PAC of 40 mg/L, PAM of China 930 ± 44 906 ± 45 56.8–60.9 Wang et al. (2020)
0.001–0.002 mg/L; pH of 7.70–7.84
(continued on next page)

Table 3 (continued).
Technologies/Operating conditions Location Influent (MPs/L) Effluent (MPs/L) Removal (%) References
Membrane discfilter:
Filtration media: pore size of 10 µm; South of Korea 1444 297 79.0 Hidayaturrahman and
HRT of 2.5 min Lee (2019)
Hydrotech HSF 1702-1F, two discs with 24 Finland 0.5 0.3 40.0 Talvitie et al. (2017a)
filter panels for each disc; HRT of 4 min;
filtration area of 5.76 m2 ; iron-based
coagulant (2 mg/L); cationic polymer (1
mg/L); filtration pore size of 10 µm
Hydrotech HSF 1702-1F, two discs with 24 Finland 2.0 0.03 98.5 Talvitie et al. (2017a)
filter panels for each disc; HRT of 4 min;
filtration area of 5.76 m2 ; iron-based
coagulant (2 mg/L); cationic polymer (1
mg/L); media (pore size of 20 µm)
Conventional activated sludge/ secondary sedimentation:
Anaerobic/ Anoxic/ Oxic process Madrid 171 ± 42 10.7 ± 5.2 93.7 Edo et al. (2020)
NA Spain 3.21 ± 0.50 1.23 ± 0.15 62.0 Bayo et al. (2020)
Lee (2019)
NA South Korea 12,580 7863 42.0 Hidayaturrahman and
Lee (2019)
Lee (2019)
NA Italy 2.5 ± 0.3 0.9 ± 0.3 64.0 Magni et al. (2019)
NA China 34.1 ± 9.4 28.4 ± 7.0 17.0 Liu et al. (2019)
SRT of 28 ± 3 days; HRT of 4–8 h; pH of Finland 57.6 ± 12.4 1.0 ± 0.4 98.3 Lares et al. (2018)
6.3–7.3; MLSS of 3100–4200 mg/L;
Temperature of 8–18 ◦ C
Polyacrylamide as coagulant was added Scotland 3.40 ± 0.28 0.25 ± 0.04 92.6 Murphy et al. (2016)
before secondary sedimentation.
Membrane bioreactor (MBR):
Submerged MBR (pore size of 0.1 µm); PVA China 10 0 100.0 Li et al. (2020a)
gel (< 5 µm) of 5%, HRT of 2.5 h; DO of
8.3 ± 0.6 mg/L, temperature of 19.1
±1.4 ◦ C
Submerged anaerobic/aerobic MBR Finland 57.6 ± 12.4 0.4 ± 0.1 99.4 Lares et al. (2018)
(flat-sheet membrane, pore size of 0.4 µm,
flux of 3.8 L/m2 h, SRT of 6 days, MLSS of
14,000 ± 1800 mg/L; temperature of
21 ± 4 ◦ C)
Submerged MBR (KUBOTA flat-sheet; HRT Finland 6.9 0.005 100.0 Talvitie et al. (2017a)
of 20–100 h)
Ozonation:
O3 dosage of 1.5–2.5 mg/L, three stages China 2230 ± 91 2348 ± 103 – Wang et al. (2020)
(dosage ratio of 2:1:1)
O3 contact time of 1 min; dosage of avg. South Korea 164 33 90.0 Hidayaturrahman and
12.6 mg/L Lee (2019)
O3 contact time of 60 min; temperature of China NA NA >90.0 Chen et al. (2018)
35–45 ◦ C
Remarks: HRT — hydraulic retention time; PAC — polyaluminum chloride; PAM — polyacrylamide; PE — polyethylene; PVA — polyvinyl alcohol; Q - flow
rate; MLSS — mixed liquor suspended solids; SRT — sludge retention time; NA — not available.
such as microbead, sheet, and fragment. In general, this pretreatment step was quite effective in removing MPs and the
rest can be removed in the following stage. However, in order to thoroughly eliminate MPs, it is necessary to consider
appropriate technology in the secondary or tertiary treatment stage.
5.2. Dissolved air flotation
Dissolved air flotation (DAF) is designed to remove insoluble substances in water such as suspended solids, oils and
greases. During the DAF process, tiny bubbles are created by dissolving air into water at high pressure. These bubbles
attach to the surface of suspended solids, resulting in the rising of solids and being removed by skimming. Recently, DAF
offered high efficiency for MPs removal. Indeed, Talvitie et al. (2017a) tested and reported that approx. 95% of MPs were
eliminated by DAF. However, the influent concentrations of MPs in this study were relatively low (2 ± 0.07 MPs/L). There
have been no studies to evaluate the effectiveness of DAF in removing MPs under different conditions such as density,
size, shape, composition of MPs. Therefore, it is difficult to give accurate and comprehensive remarks for this technology
to MPs removal at present. This is an interesting research gap for future study.
5.3. Coagulation
Coagulation process was applied at the first step in the tertiary treatment stage by using chemical coagulants (ferric
and aluminum salts or their derivatives) to destabilize surface charge and form flocs with MPs and other contaminants in
wastewater and then remove them by settling or skimming. Hidayaturrahman and Lee (2019) studied the MPs removal
of coagulation by polyaluminum chloride (PAC) with different initial MPs dosages (A: 4200 MPs/L, B: 5840 MPs/L and C:
31,400 MPs/L). The results showed that the removal efficiencies of MPs obtained 53.8% for A, 47.1% for B and 81.6% for C.
It is obvious that the formation of MPs flocs closely depended on the MPs concentration. Indeed, with a certain amount
of coagulant, water with a lower MPs concentration would be difficult to form flocs, resulting in a lower MPs removal
efficiency (Hidayaturrahman and Lee, 2019). Rezania et al. (2018) has also found that the ability to remove MPs positively
correlated with coagulant dose. However, the further the flocculant dosage continued to increase, the removal rate of MPs
would tend to decrease. This is explained by the fact that MPs’ zeta potential decreased as the coagulant dosage increased
excessively, resulting in difficulty to form MPs’ flocs.
In addition, the efficiency of the coagulation process depends on the type of coagulant used. For example, in the study
of Ma et al. (2019b), both aluminum and ferric-based coagulants were simultaneously examined with the presence of
polyethylene (PE), which have been commonly detected in various wastewater and its percentage was much higher than
the other types of MPs. As a result, the performance of aluminum coagulant was more efficient than the other one in the
PE removal. For PE with small size (< 0.5 mm), MPs removal efficiency increased from 8.3% up to 36.9% when aluminum
coagulant dosage increased from 13.5 mg/L Al to 405 mg/L Al.
Several studies indicated that polyacrylamide (PAM) was effective in enhancing the efficiency of coagulation (da Luz
et al., 2019; Hosseinzadeh et al., 2019). Ma et al. (2019a) investigated the MPs (PE with size less than 0.5 mm) removal
by Al-based coagulant (dosage of 135 mg/L) combined anionic and cationic PAM at pH 7. The results indicated that the
removal efficiency was boosted from 26 ± 3% (without anionic PAM) to 61 ± 4% (with anionic PAM of 15 mg/L). However,
there was 45 ± 4% of PE eliminated by adding 15 mg/L cationic PAM and 61 ± 4% with the same dosage of anionic PAM.
The findings showed that anionic PAM was more effective than cationic PAM in PE MPs removal.
Moreover, the efficiency of coagulation process for MPs also depended on pH values of water solution. Ma et al. (2019b)
investigated PE removal of coagulation process with AlCl3 · 6H2 O (5 mmol/L or 135 mg/L Al) at pH 6, 7 and 8. Higher
removal efficiency (27.5%) was obtained at lower pH condition (Table 3). Ma et al. (2019a) also tested the effects of pH
condition (6,7 and 8 pH) on the performance of the coagulation using the FeCl3 · 6H2 O (2 mmol/L) with 0.92–0.97 g
MPs/m3 . As the results, the highest removal (17 ± 2%) for MPs obtained at pH of 8. Throughout this experiment, it also
reported that MPs’ density (0.92–0.97 g/m3 ) was quite low, resulting in the difficulty of settling during coagulation. With
this low density, the optimal operating condition to get the highest efficiency of MPs elimination (91 ± 1%) consisted of
FeCl3 · 6H2 O of 2 mmol/L, anionic PAM of 15 mg/L and pH of 8.
Most recently, Wang et al. (2020) assessed the influence of MPs’ particle size and polymer type on the efficiency of
the coagulation process coupled with sedimentation. The results show that larger particles will have a higher removal
efficiency. Specifically, 100% of large particles (> 10 µm) and 45%–75% of small particles (5 – 10 µm) were removed by
coagulation. Compared to filament and pellet forms, fibers can be eliminated highest (51%–61%) because fibrous MPs were
easier to attach to flocs. The results also indicated that PET was removed the most (59%–69%) compared with PP, PS and
PAM. This finding has also been reported by Katrivesis et al. (2019) and Lares et al. (2018).
In general, the coagulation/flocculation process could help to remove up to 90% MPs. Based on the literature review,
it is noticeable that this method closely depended on pH value; size, shape and components of MPs; dosage and type
of coagulant and flocculant aids. Until now, the number of researches related to this technology for MPs is still limited,
especially for wastewater treatment systems. It is essential that the future study would concentrate on finding the best
coagulants/flocculant aids and its optimum conditions for MPs removal together with colloids elimination.
5.4. Filtration process
5.4.1. Sand filter

Sand filter can remove MPs by capturing mechanism between sand grains or adhering to the surface of sand grains. A
study on municipal wastewater treatment system in Italy found that about 56% of MPs were removed by sand filter and
disinfection (Magni et al., 2019). In addition, Wang et al. (2020) investigated the sand filtration system for MPs removal
at a water treatment plant in China. The authors found that the MPs removal efficiency of sand filter was not high (29%–
44%). The results revealed that the amount of sphere/pellet and fiber forms MPs were much more retained compared
to the fragment form MPs, namely 31%–49% for pellets, 24%–51% for fibers and 19%–28% for fragments. Thereby, this
conventional filtration technology was not proposed as the main treatment process for removing MPs from the view of
these authors.
5.4.2. Rapid sand filter

Rapid sand filter (RSF) is made from many different media layers. Usually, there are three layers made of anthracite
grains, silica sand, and gravel. In some cases, the RSF includes only sand. For example in the study of Hidayaturrahman
and Lee (2019), a case study used sand filter with depth of 6.8 m, sand grain size around 0.8–1.2 mm, and hydraulic
residence time about 1.08 h. Approx. 74% of MPs in wastewater were retained after passing through RSF with the influent
concentration of MPs of 215 MPs/L. Talvitie et al. (2017a) also evaluated the effectiveness of removing MPs by RSF
containing 1 m of gravel and 0.5 m of quartz at the sewage treatment plant in Finland. High removal efficiency (97%,
MPs from 0.7 ± 0.1 MPs/L down to 0.02 ± 0.007 MPs/L) was obtained. Therefore, sand filter was considered as a suitable
technology for MPs elimination for the low MPs concentration range.
5.4.3. Granular activated carbon filtration

In recent years, granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration was employed to treat some emerging contaminants in an
aqueous environment (Östman et al., 2019). Wang et al. (2020) evaluated MPs removal capability of the GAC filtration
system in a drinking water treatment plant. MPs removal capacity of this technology was up to 60.9%, less effective than
other conventional technologies such as coagulation/flocculation, sand filtration, RSF and ozonation. In addition, the study
also showed that PE accounted for the majority of MPs removed in comparison with PP and PAM. In the GAC process,
contaminants are removed by a combination of biodegradation and physical adsorption. However, so far the mechanism
to remove MPs in GAC is still unclear. Therefore, filtration process would be an effective technology for MPs removal at
low MPs concentration ranges. Further survey on cost–benefit analysis of different filtration rate and type of filtration
media would be interestingly to be assessed.
5.4.4. Membrane disc-filter

Disc-filter (DF) for tertiary treatment was made up of large pore fiber membranes (10 - 20 µm). Hidayaturrahman
and Lee (2019) employed DF with 10-µm pore size to remove MPs in Daegu, South of Korea. The results showed that
approx. 79% of MPs (from 1444 MPs/L downed to 297 MPs/L) were removed by the DF system. In addition, Talvitie et al.
(2017a) also found that the DF reduced the MPs concentration from 0.5 ± 0.2 to 0.3 ± 0.1 MPs/L (40%) by 10-µm pore
size filters and from 2.0 ± 1.3 to 0.03 ± 0.01 MPs/L (98.5%) with 20-µm pore size filters. Usually smaller sized filters
were expected for higher removal efficiency. However, the opposite result in this study was due to the disturbance of
previous treatment stages, which affected the sampling period. From the literature review the DF showed a relatively
low efficiency in MPs removal. This could be explained that membrane fouling occurred due to a large number of MPs
adhering to the membrane surface, the high-pressure backwashing process was applied to clean the disc-filter and thereby
accidentally caused the MPs to pass through the membrane. After backwashing, the secondary membrane layer (biofilm
layer on discfilter) was lost, thus MPs could be easily passed during this early filtration stage.
5.5. Conventional activated sludge process
Conventional activated sludge process (CASP) is a popular wastewater treatment technology based on biodegradation
by activated sludge which is then separated by a sedimentation tank. CASP has been widely used to treat soluble/colloidal
organic pollutants and nutrients in many different types of wastewater. Once occurrence of MPs in surface water and
wastewater has been widely considered, CASP’s performance has been also assessed in removing MPs. In this technology,
MPs could adhere to suspended solids and be separated by the following settling process or it could possibly play a role
of moving media for attach growth. In fact, Lares et al. (2018) found that very high removal efficiency (98%) of MPs was
obtained in CASP system. Similarly, Murphy et al. (2016) and Edo et al. (2020) also reported that this technology could
remove up to 92.6% and 93.7% of MPs, respectively. The other study of Hidayaturrahman and Lee (2019) indicated that
MPs removal efficiency varied from 42 to 77%. CASP in the urban wastewater treatment plant (Spain) also removed ca.
62% of MPs (Bayo et al., 2020). A survey of municipal wastewater treatment systems in Italy found that about 64% of MPs
were removed after grid chamber and the CASP system (Magni et al., 2019). However, in anaerobic/ anoxic/oxic (AAO)
process, approx. 17% of MPs were removed from wastewater and transferred into excess sludge (Liu et al., 2019). Overall,
the MPs removal efficiency of CASP was not stable and varied relatively widely.
Bisphenol A (BPA) leaching from PVC microplastics releases toxicity to prevent the activities of heterotrophic bacteria
and nitrifying bacteria of CASP (Li et al., 2015). In addition, there have not been many studies presenting the ability to
decompose MPs in CASP. Although the investment cost is less expensive (He et al., 2017), the main disadvantages of this
technology are occupying an area and creating a lot of the excess sludge.
5.6. Membrane bioreactor
Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is a combined technology of biological process and membrane separation. Compared
with conventional activated sludge process (CASP), this technology is not only effective in wastewater treatment and
reuse but also saves the area, limits the sludge production, and easily scales up. Therefore, MBR has been widely known
and successfully applied in many different types of wastewater, especially for those containing emerging pollutants such
as antibiotics, pesticides, personal care products, pharmaceuticals, etc. (Nguyen et al., 2019; Vo et al., 2019a,b). The
aggregated data of Hidalgo-Ruz et al. (2012) shows that the size of MPs in the surface water was greater than 300 µm
in most studies. With this size, it is very potential to be completely removed by MBR with the microfiltration membrane
modules. Indeed, MBR has been researched for the function of removing MPs in recent years. Talvitie et al. (2017a) used
MBR including 20 submerged flat-sheet UF membranes with a pore size of 0.4 µm. The influent concentration of MPs was
6.9 ± 0.1 MPs/L. The results showed that most of MPs were retained after passing through MBR system. Similarly, Lares
et al. (2018) employed the pilot-scale submerged MBR including flat-sheet UF with pore size of 0.4 µm. Approx. 99.4% of
MPs were removed by the MBR. Most recently, Li et al. (2020a) has studied the effectiveness of PVC gel removal (particle
size < 5 µm) by the MBR with a 0.1-µm submerged membrane and a 0.1-m2 surface area. Under operating conditions of
2.5-hour HRT, temperatures around 19.1 ◦ C and pH 7.5, the results showed virtually no MPs was detected in the permeate
of the MBR system.
Generally, challenges still remain due to MPs after filtration remains in sludge which needs to be treated again as
solid waste, resulting in eventually increasing treatment cost. Another of the major drawbacks of MBR is membrane
fouling which could be control by backwash or chemical cleaning. This might impact membrane fibers negatively and
also potentially lead to an increase in maintenance cost. However, compared with other technologies, the performance
of MBR seems to be not affected by the size, shape, and composition of MPs. Many studies have been taken into account
for the conclusion that MBR is highly effective and relatively stable for MPs removal. Thereby, this suggests that in the
elimination of MPs, MBR is the most promising removal technology. Further, the effect of MPs on membrane fouling should
be investigated in the future study. Also the degradation and/or transformation of MPs in MBR should be investigated in
the future study.
5.7. Ozonation
Ozonation can break down the polymer that constitutes MPs into functional groups that contain oxygen (Chen et al.,
2018). Under ozonation treatment, the physio-chemical properties of polymers may be altered, for example by an increase
in adhesion, surface tension, solubility and hydrophobic properties as well as a decrease in melting point and viscosity
(Singh and Sharma, 2008). Indeed, ozonation technology was employed to oxidize non-organic and organic contaminants
and eliminate a significant number of MPs. Approx. 90% of MPs were eliminated by the ozonation after 30-min processing
(Hidayaturrahman and Lee, 2019). Another study also showed that more than 90% of MPs decomposes after 60 min of
exposure to ozone at temperatures between 35 and 45 ◦ C (Chen et al., 2018). In certain cases, the ozonation treatment was
almost ineffective because it only decomposed large-size MPs to smaller sizes, resulting in slightly increasing the output
MPs concentration compared to the input (Wang et al., 2020). One of the factors limiting the application of ozonation for
the removal of MPs might be the operating cost. Although the degradation rate increased dramatically in shorter operating
time, this process required a large amount of ozone dosage. In addition, during ozonation, if the treatment does not take
place completely, intermediate products can be formed that can adversely affect human health and the ecosystem.
6. Conclusions and future perspectives
Plastics production and consumption are on the rise, resulting in increased risks to human health and the ecosystem.
In addition to the plan to reduce the consumption of plastics and to find alternative sources of material, a better
understanding of the technologies to eliminate microplastics (MPs) is essential and has been discussed in this work.
From the review results, an average of 70% of the MPs were removed in the primary treatment. At this step, the
function of dissolved air flotation (DAF) for MPs removal was the most prominent. For the secondary treatment, the most
outstanding treatment process was membrane bioreactor (MBR) system with more than 99%. This result shows that the
primary treatment units coupled with MBR processes appeared to be able to completely eliminate MPs from wastewaters.
However, the challenges of these technologies are that there are still few studies evaluating the effectiveness of MBRs
on MPs; the impact of MPs on membrane fouling as well as the cost–benefit analysis has not been discussed much.
In addition, MPs removal efficiency were significantly affected by its operating conditions and environmental factors of
MBR. And these issues have not been concentrated in the research so far. Therefore, it is essential to pay more attention
in subsequent studies on the MPs removal in other bioreactors, especially MBRs.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh
under the grant number Tc-MTTN-2019-07. This study has been conducted under the framework of CARE-RESCIF initiative.
In addition, the authors would like to thank for literature data summary of Mr. Minh-Thanh Lai, Ms. Ngoc-Bao-Tran
Nguyen, Ms. Ngoc-Huyen Pham, Ms. Tuong-Khanh Nguyen, Mr. Quoc-Thai Pham, Ms. Quynh-Chi Nguyen, Mr. Quang-Vinh
Tran, Ms. Laura Stocco Blanche and other students.
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Environmental Technology & Innovation

Microplastics pollution in wastewater: Characteristics,

5.4.1. Sand filter...................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Fig. 1. Pathways of microplastics transport.

2. Characteristics of microplastics and their emission sources

3. Fate and transport of microplastics in the environment

4. How microplastics influence human health and ecosystem

5. Removal technologies for microplastics

5.1. Grit chamber/primary sedimentation

(continued on next page)

5.2. Dissolved air flotation

5.4. Filtration process

5.4.1. Sand filter

5.4.2. Rapid sand filter

5.4.3. Granular activated carbon filtration

5.4.4. Membrane disc-filter

5.5. Conventional activated sludge process

5.6. Membrane bioreactor

6. Conclusions and future perspectives

Declaration of competing interest

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