Extracting Microplastics with Olive Oil
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
- Today we're extracting and purifying microplastics from my local lake using Olive Oil! This is part of the #TeamSeas campaign, to raise awareness around the issues of plastic in our oceans, beaches and rivers.
All adsense revenue from this video will be donated to #TeamSeas, and you can donate directly at teamseas.org/
CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING 🥰
🔬Patreon if that's your jam: / breakingtaps
☕Buy me a coffee? www.buymeacoffee.com/Breaking...
📢Twitter: / breakingtaps
💻Discord: / discord
==== Details ====
There are multiple ways to extract microplastics for analysis, mostly using density separation. I tried a technique called Oil Extraction Process. Because most plastics are Oleophilic ("oil-loving"), a mixture of oil and water will separate plastic into the oil phase. Everything else will settle into the water phase, allowing you to collect the microplastics for futher study.
I collected sediment from my local lake (Lake Champlain) and ran it through the OEP, with varying levels of success. I eventually got a good sample and was able to image it on the Scanning Electron Microscope. It's hard to know if any individual piece is a microplastic, but we can use morphology and EDS clues to help decide.
==== Oil Extraction Process citations ====
- Coppock, R. L., Cole, M., Lindeque, P. K., Queirós, A. M., & Galloway, T. S. (2017). A small-scale, portable method for extracting microplastics from marine sediments. Environmental Pollution, 230, 829-837. doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2017.07.017
- Lechthaler, S., Hildebrandt, L., Stauch, G., & Schüttrumpf, H. (2020). Canola oil extraction in conjunction with a plastic free separation unit optimises microplastics monitoring in water and sediment. Analytical Methods. doi:10.1039/d0ay01574a
- Scopetani, C., Chelazzi, D., Mikola, J., Leiniö, V., Heikkinen, R., Cincinelli, A., & Pellinen, J. (2020). Olive oil-based method for the extraction, quantification and identification of microplastics in soil and compost samples. Science of The Total Environment, 733, 139338. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139338
www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
==== Alternative Non-profits to consider ====
- River Cleanup www.river-cleanup.org/en
- Mr. Trash Wheel www.mrtrashwheel.com/
- Water Witch waterwitch.com/
- 5 Gyres www.5gyres.org/
- Gulf of Alaska Keeper www.goak.org/
- Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project www.pmdphawaii.org/
- KIMO www.kimointernational.org/
- Ocean Voyages Institute www.oceanvoyagesinstitute.org/
==== The Ocean Cleanup citations ====
- gizmodo.com/the-dream-of-scoo...
- www.theatlantic.com/science/a...
- www.ecowatch.com/marine-plast...
- discardstudies.com/2015/06/05...
- www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/t...
- www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/181...
- www.dezeen.com/2019/05/23/the...
- www.theguardian.com/environme...
- Falk-Andersson, J., Larsen Haarr, M., & Havas, V. (2020). Basic principles for development and implementation of plastic clean-up technologies: What can we learn from fisheries management? Science of The Total Environment, 745, 141117. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141117
==== Timecodes ====
0:00 #TeamSeas
1:00 What are microplastics?
2:13 Density separation
3:07 Oil extraction process
4:06 Running the protocol
4:55 Vacuum Filtration woes
6:36 First SEM results
7:50 Scaling down the experiment
8:30 Alternatives to vacuum filtration
11:16 Second round of SEM results
15:27 #TeamSeas and non-profit partners - Наука та технологія
*Addendum*
- As many folks have pointed out already, the campaign's target (30m pounds of plastic) is basically a day's worth of plastic production that's going into the ocean. It's a rounding error. I agree, and cynically the campaign can be viewed as a distraction from real methods to effect change (legislation, removing single-use plastics, making companies more accountable for their packaging or plastic use, etc). I even recorded a monologue around this, but ultimately cut it in favor of the disclaimer about TOC since that felt like the greater immediate threat given how much good PR this campaign is going to generate for them. And because I didn't feel like I had the knowledge or authority to really speak to the political/economic side of the equation. Which is unfortunately where this needs to be solved imo - it's not a technical problem, but a political one....and global at that. My hope in making the video was to at least raise awareness about how insidious microplastics really are... you can't just scoop them up with a net. And perhaps that will have knock-on effects of encouraging more people to take vocal political and economic stances. Domain of Science just released a video that echos many of my thoughts: ua-cam.com/video/bL7WvdNdk3Y/v-deo.html
- I failed to mention oxidation of the organics, which was a gross oversight on my part. You can see that at 8:16 I added some bleach to help combat the biofilm/organics I was seeing in the first attempt. In the literature, some kind of oxidation procedure is often done to help digest organic materials and cleanup the plastics. Strong bases can be used but will degrade certain plastics, so typically a Fenton reaction (peroxide + iron) is performed instead. It can still affect plastics but tends to be more gentle. Enzymatic approaches are often done as well. These are especially nescessary if purifying from tissue extract (e.g. grinding up clams or mussels or whatever). It's almost always done as a cleaning step _after_ a purification procedure like density separation, foam floation, oil, density centrifugation, etc.
- My friend pointed out the irony of using nylon filters, cutting up plastic syringes, etc on a video about microplastics. Guilty as charged. I tried to use only metal/glass to start but it didn't quite go to plan. Will be disposing of the waste responsibly 😅
- I glossed right over why microplastics are problematic: since they are relatively inert, is it any worse than just sand or other sediment?
Plastics are mostly inert, but not entirely and a lot of additives (colorants, plasticizers, etc) can leach out of the plastic over time (or situations like the BPA kerfluffle a few years back, where it was discovered that polycarbonate can hydrolize into BPA which is notably more toxic). Plastics tend to absorb and concentrate heavier metals and other contaminants, so it might speed up pollution concentration in the food chain. Very small particles (approaching the nano scale of things) can cross into cells easily and it's not clear how bad that is, but they certainly aren't supposed to be there :) There's a fair amount of evidence for example nanoparticles of teflon are fairly toxic, and could apply to many other plastics. Fibers can be problematic for plankton, which have a hard time passing them through their digestive system due to relative size and shape. Large pieces of plastic are problematic because animals expend energy eating them but derive no nutrition, and in some cases they can linger or remain permanently stuck in stomachs which slowly starve the animal.
Basically, no one is quite sure _just_ how bad it is. There's just so much microplastic around the world (and literally no organism evolved to ingest plastic) so it's kind of a brave new world. Just not really sure what the long term effects are, but it could be quite bad. Asbestos is quite inert too, but you definitely don't want to eat or breathe it due to the size and shape.
This is a pretty good and accessible article if you want to read more: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3
now that i think about it (25 years later), if you used for instance Ozone instead of air, the particles could very possibly statically charged and separate even better from other materials.
I think the money should be put into waste management of the poor countries. That is where the majority of plastic trash come. Also one huge issue is abandoned fishing nets. There should be extra payments when buying new nets, without returning old ones.
I always think that metals is the way to go to substitute plastics
Actually recyclable
Easy to clean
Easy to reuse
@@user255 the waste inside poor countries comes from the big countries
USA and Europe used to pat themselves in the back for sending trash to china for recycling
Now they send it to India
The cycle will go on as long as they can greenwash it
@@0Arcoverde Sure some western countries have send trash into poor countries for recycling. But I don't think it is the majority of the problem. Only in China there lives 1.4 billion persons and no decent waste management. What else the result could be?
All the plastic I use never goes into sea or poor countries. It is partly recycled and majority goes to energy production. I don't think there is any point in sending plastic to poor countries.
Also metal is not reasonable substitute for plastic in many cases. Even soda cans have plastic coating inside. Metals do not have good chemical stability (or mechanical when thin enough to be light).
The straight honesty of the final part is something you rarely find these days
Quick note about your centrifuge results with four layers: oil, oil-solids, water, water-solids.
Basically, this sounds like a surface-area to volume ratio effect. Sometimes called "squared vs. cubed law."
The oil-solids like oil, and their "stickiness" to oil is basically proportional to surface area (for a specific type of plastic).
The mass of the oil-soilds particles is basically proportional to their volume (for a given density of plastic).
So basically oil-stickiness forces go as radius squared (surface area), while centrifuge forces goes as radius cubed (volume).
So as particles get smaller and smaller, their surface-area to volume ratio gets bigger and bigger.
Lim (r-->0) of (1/r^2)/(1/r^3) = lim (r-->0) (1/r) = infinity
So very tiny particles have way stronger stickiness-to-oil forces (surface area) but relatively weaker gravity/centrifuge forces (volume). This is why tiny particles in your sample were not centrifuged out of your oil layer, but just migrated to the bottom of the oil.
At least that's my guess (as a physics major).
Couldn't it also be that the density of those particles was greater than oil, but less than water? I'm not sure how the sample was collected, but, if buoyant material were mechanically attached to denser material, the sample could easily contain both types of particles regardless of where it was collected.
Good point!
It's certainly possible that some particles have an intermediate density between water and oil.
I'm unsure of a practical way to test this, but in *theory* you could increase the speed of the centrifuge (ie: ultra-centrifuge). If particles fall from the oil layer into the water layer, then they were (probably?) affected by surface-area-to-volume ratio.
But if they don't fall into the water layer, then we still don't know. Did we not run the centrifuge fast enough to pull them out of the oil (because they're hydrophobic/oleophillic), or because they have a density between water and oil?
Maybe a better way to test this would be to extract the particles, and then wash them to remove oil (detergent or solvent?). After rinsing and drying, put them in water and see if they sink of float.
"Lim (r-->0) of (1/r^2)/(1/r^3) = lim (r-->0) (1/r) = infinity"
Did you mean "Lim (r-->0) of (1/r^2)/(1/r^3) = Lim (r-->0) of (r^3/r^2) = lim (r-->0) (r) = 0"?
That would mean that "as radius approaches zero, ...?". The rest of the reciprocal values don't make sense to me. If they're supposed to be the surface area compared to the volume, you forgot a 4Pi coefficient (assuming a sphere) for surface area and a Pi*4/3 coefficient (also assuming a sphere) for volume. Ofc the coefficients don't matter in this specific case since the limit is zero, but it's still important.
Ooops! You're right that I got my math wrong. I don't know why I set it up incorrectly.
Here's what it should've been:
Lim (r-->0) of (r^2)/(r^3) = lim (r-->0) of (1/r) = +infinity
I don't know why I did the reciprocal of the numerator and denominator. My bad.
In this type of estimation, we mainly look at proportional values, so we often drop constant factors like (4*pi) and (4/3)*pi. It's a bit like "Big O()" notation in computer-science. It tells us the overall behavior, in a semi-quantitative way. If you need to do actual engineering, then you re-do the analysis with the constant factors. Using the analogy of Big O() notation in computer science, you know that Bubble Sort is O(n^2) in runtime, while MergeSort is O(n*log(n)). Assuming the constant factors aren't insanely huge or insanely small, you know that for reasonably large n, Merge Sort will win. And that's very useful to know. But if n is relatively small, then you need the constant factors to know which would be faster. So in that case, the constant factors are important.
Back to the original topic:
There is a general principle that small particles have huge (surface area)/(volume) ratios. This affects an incredible number of phenomena. Everything from combustion (because reactions, like burning, happen on the "surface" of particles), to particle adhesion (total Van der Waals "stickiness" is proportional to contact area, which is related to surface area, while gravity effects are proportional to density and weight).
It's also related to stuff like heat exchangers: Heat is transferred through surfaces. But the amount of heat you want to transfer is proportional to volume of material, and specific-heat of material. This is why heat-exchangers try to have lots of (surface area) for a given (volume).
This type of thing is so common, there is shorthand for it: "surface-area to volume ratio" and "r^2 vs r^3 effect(s)."
btw, Thanks for pointing out my math error.
Lemme know if you have other thoughts or comments.
I don't know how you manage to do it, but EVERY one of your videos are interesting, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating. Keep up the good work :)
Thanks, really appreciate that!
I decided to not spend money on the problem, but instead go for a walk in the nearby river valley and pick up all the garbage i could see. I think i'll have to make one of these trash grabbers before the next trip, so i don't have to bend down as much, and it's easier to get things out of bushes and high growing weeds.
You've already done more than an attention grabbing crypto ponzi scheme hashtag ever will.
@@emislive Is TeamSeas a crypto ponzi scheme?
Even if a huge amount of people did this, it would make exactly fuck all difference when certain countries keep dumping megatonnes of plastic wholesale into the rivers and oceans.
@@Shrouded_reaperll, a billion people picking up a kilo of plastic every day would add up to a megaton per day. Idk how much plastic enters the environment every day but if it’s on the order of 1-20 megatons then one eighth of the population being like OP could produce a reasonable offset.
Edit: Apparently around 380 million tons of plastic enter the environment per *year*. So one eighth of the population picking up just over a kilo of plastic every day before it enters the ocean/ecosystem would hypothetically be enough to prevent the buildup of plastic waste. It’s just a shame that there’s next to nothing you could reasonably do to convince 1 in every 8 people around the world to go out of their way to pick up trash.
I pick up trash while walking my dog, a small difference, but a difference nonetheless.
Extra virgin olive oil, fancy! "use to dress, dip and dazzle" . This usage surely go under the dazzle heading!
I like how you go the extra mile by checking the organizations, suggest more, explain more in the pinned comment, etc. Thank you.
Actually, the fibers you see could be microplastic. We wear a lot of "polyester" fabrics today, which is just a nice name for PET. Those clothes loose fiber fragments during their use (or during washing). Nice video, as always - thank you :-)
I always find reasoning around microplastics on the weak side. I mean, I don't think we should ignore them but so far I have not found any evidence they're really any dangerous and everything around them is rather based on "we don't know what it will do" or "it's a substance that does not appear in nature". I mean, the fact that they're stable feels like good thing, at least their chemical influence on the nature is limited. And there are plenty of organic polymers in the nature with similar properties, such as lignin or chitin. Not mentioning a ton of substances that are even way more stable such as silicon dioxide (sand) or aluminium phyllosilicates (clay). If natural organisms can deal with these, there's good chance they can deal with microplastics as well and there will be enough time for evolution to deal with any remaining issues.
Speaking of evolution, I think it's our only chance in dealing with microplastics anyway. Plastic eating bacteria will either appear spontaneously (some plastics such as nylon already have bacteria that can break them down) or we'll need engineer them. There's just no way to filter all water and mud on Earth using machines. It's also not unheard of in Earth history - when lignin appeared, it was pretty much like today's plastics. There was no organism able to decompose it and it took millions of years till something appeared - but ultimately they did evolve. Today's coal deposits are the reminders of that era. Who knows, maybe plastic deposits of today will become source of power and catalyst of fast advancement for future civilizations just like coal was for us.
Also, Linda Sawyer's book Polymer Microscopy is a good read. You could "stain" your "microplastics" with a heavy-metal.
Looking forward to the micrographia video! Also appreciate the extra info about the Ocean cleanup and letting your viewers make an informed decision!
Great to se the whole process, and love the walk through. Great quality, and have a much more appreciation of how bad the problem is. Specially if you can't even spot it with all the special equipment you have. Good luck with majority trying to figure out anything. Thanks for spreading awareness!
Given that one of the defining features of these micro plastics is their chemical resistance couldn't you do some pre-selection by mixing them with a base to dissolve other organic materials and then mix them with an acid to dissolve many of the inorganic materials without dissolving the plastics?
Yes'ish! I should have mentioned that, oversight on my part. I'll add a note to the addendum 👍 These procedures usually include some kind of oxidative step to digest organic material. You have to be careful though since some plastics degrade in strong bases like KOH. Fenton reaction (peroxide + iron catalyst) is a pretty common method. But it's not perfect, and can cause changes to the plastics in shape/size/agglomeration/etc. There are enzymatic approaches too.
I used bleach in one of my preps to help cut down on a biofilm that was forming at the interface, there's a quick footnote on the screen at one point.
I think the word plastics is a misnomer anymore.
The range of different technologies today, and understanding in synthetic blending, along with all of the legacy plastics identity problems, means that only experts really know what is going on. Some of the synthetic blends of _plastic,_ are approaching a rubber like substance.
The olive oil you used for your experiments seems to be from a plastic bottle, have you checked the olive oil by itself before the experiment to see if there's already microplastics in the oilve oil?
I work with waterjet cutting, when cutting plastics it basically turns all the removed material into bulk microplastic. I would be very interested in a video exploring practical ways of separating the microplastic before the water goes down the drain, as it will instantly clog even the coarsest of screens and filters.
If you need a large concentrated sample of microplastics, I'd try to find someone local with a waterjet cutter and ask them.
For your purposes, combining this with a centrifugal filter might be a good method. Stick some impellers near the upper edge to keep the fluid spinning fast enough for the oil to settle in the center, keep a constant inflow of used cutting fluid into the center, maybe use multiple units if an improvement is found, but one isn't enough. Have a small tap off of the oil settling section to run the oil through a more standard centrifuge stage for the sake of concentrating the plastic enough to be worth disposing of.
Interesting, yeah Jared's comment might be best approach. Since you know you only have plastic + water + grit, to worry about, something like a centrifugal separator might be the easiest way to do it. I'm not sure if there are more industrial versions, but in the lab setting there's a specific kind of centrifuge called a "continuous flow centrifuge" which continually separates out solids from a constant flow of liquid. Maybe something like that exists for more industrial purposes? Hmmm
@@BreakingTaps maybe a collab with waterjet channel?
I like your honesty of assessing your own results, it does you credit as a scientist.
Thoroughly mixing and stirring the soil sample with water first should improve yields as this allows the particles to disperse better. When you add the oil first you are increasing the chance of soil particles sticking together through adhesive forces, which the water can't overcome since the particles are covered with oil now.
Ahhh, interesting. That makes a lot of sense! I wonder if that accounted for some of the differences between first and second run, I added water first for the "small scale" batches without really thinking about it.
I really enjoyed this and thank you for your contribution. Well done!
Hats off for your admirable efforts. Idk about detection but for elimination, plastic-eating bacterias is probably the way to go.
hopefully it works and doesn't become the rabbits in Australia.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 I mean if it works, it would but that's part of dumping a lot of something in an ecosystem
Mark the filter paper for a reference point, scan it, use it then compare it, before after.. 👍
I learned about #teamseas 3 days ago, managed to crank out a video tutorial on how to make juggling clubs out of plastic bottles and felt real accomplished about it.... but this video is a whole different level of educational value. I really enjoyed learning about the methodology on how to extract microplastics and I like the research you put in to the clean-up orgs involved with team seas. Good stuff my guy
unfortunately your juggling clubs will also produce microplastics. Every plastic product will.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 Yeah I'm aware, but #teamseas isn't specifically about micro-plastics my guy. Having tons of plastic trash in the ocean is just as concerning. The besides the actual goal (which has it's flaws as this video has pointed out), I think the other part of #teamseas is to bring awareness and power to a topic RIGHT before COP26. I think it's to remind those in power that issues revolving around environmentalism are not going to go away, and people care about it!
@@thewhitefalcon8539 the vast majority of microplastics come from synthetic fibers, not broken down plastic products.
Impressed with the honesty about Team Seas! ... also, awesome video - as usual.
When it comes to solutions to large problems, not everything is always agreed upon. That said, awareness alone probably makes this campaign worth it, the funding being almost a useful bonus.
I’m a chemist and am pondering your problems. Instead of doing filtration to isolate the micro plastics could you have centrifuged it and then did an acid digestion? I’m thinking sulfuric acid to break down most cells and then something like dilute HF to dissolve the diatoms? Or maybe use a glass wool filter paper to enhance contrast on SEM? Make the Z difference greater.
Hmm, that sounds pretty reasonable to me! Would have to verify that the expected plastics aren't susceptible to the acids (I know some are pretty sensitive to caustics like KOH, unsure about acids). Oxidative schemes are reasonably common in the literature, typically different peroxide arrangements. That's a very good idea about glass filter paper, didn't think about that at all! Would definitely have helped...trying to find a piece of nylon on a nylon filter was an exercise in frustration :)
@@BreakingTaps haha my first thought was nitric acid or go for a one step with KOH but then realized those would probably have less comparability. Also with non foaming detergent try jet dry and the like. They don’t foam as bad and are volatile surfactants so you can remove them easier. My day job is developing cleaning chemicals for high reliability electronics. Well mostly now it’s cleanliness testing.
Advantage with glass filter is you could probably nuke it with piranha prior and start with a fresh slate (or maybe bake it). Then once you have your BSE image do a negative of it.
Also if you don’t mind me asking where about near lake Champlain are you? I’ve got relatives in Plattsburgh and surrounding areas. Used to fly into Burlington and then take ferry. Also went to college in Troy Ny.
@@loberd09 Woah Jet Dry is a great tip, definitely stashing that for later. Never would have thought of it, but makes perfect sense. I guess I did have a low/no-foaming surfactant and just didn't know it :)
Small world! We're a bit north of Burlington, but used to live on the NY side down south of Plattsburgh (Westport area) :) Did you happen to go to RPI? I'm a 2010 grad myself!
@@BreakingTaps holy fuck I am RPI 2009 chemistry so we sure as hell would have overlapped. You on twitter?
Well how about that! I was a bio grad, so who knows, we might have even shared some ochem classes or something :) I am indeed on twitter: twitter.com/breakingtaps
"Whereas most sediment like rocks and gravel and even a lot of creatures are more dense" Aw man...im trying.
It flew passed me...
(Wait for it, wait for it! )
[Two comments later]
Smacks me on the back of the head, you can't be that dense. Rocks are up there, you know...
Thank you for this!!!
plastics are kind of like radioactive materials in that a small amount can contaminate a huge volume with microparticles
Cleaning the Ocean before fixing the production and disposal of plastic is like removing water from a sinking boat instead of patching the hole. Bad use of resources!!!!
Legislation should be adjusted, removing single-use plastics, making companies more accountable for their packaging or plastic use, etc.
Of course, thumbs up for the video.
Great project, I learned a lot, thank you. Question, did you try to spike in known amount / shape / material of microplastics into a clean sample to calibrate your filtration / imaging equipment?
I didn't, which in retrospect was a pretty large oversight. Someone else also suggested I should have imaged just the reagents (olive oil, distilled water, etc) to make sure they were clean/pure and not contributing. Oops!
@@BreakingTaps Not sure it was an oversight per-se, I don't know your equipment. I just thought a spike-in would allow you to create a pattern of the particles that you can recognize in real samples. It also gives an absolute concentration that would be worth looking at. I am still not sure, just how many particles are inside 1 mL or so.
Interesting but you kind of did basically prove how doing microplastic identification and categorization is essentially impossible with morphological recognition alone.
Soooooooo time to start crowd funding that FTIR microscope?! It's really the only way to reliably do it... you know you want to
😏
Use track-etched filters, so you will not be confused with the fibers. Great video. Keep it up.
Oh! Didn't know about that kind of filter, looks perfect! Will see about grabbing some for future experiments.
I was going to suggest glass microfiber filters, but this is probably a much better idea. 👍
very informative for me thank you
Not sure why but this thumbnail made me think this old Tony had uploaded great video!
Haha yeah, a bunch of folks have mentioned it already. I think it was the 😱emoji... I just tweaked the thumbnail to not accidentally step on any internet toes :)
You can help the water fall out of suspension with the oil simply by heating it up; at least, it works for homebrew biodiesel.
Hello! I'm attempting a similar project, and I was wondering why you chose to use nylon syringe filters. Is nylon more oleophilic than PES? Thanks!
Just what I had on hand to be honest! In retrospect something like fiberglass or ceramic filters would have worked better for the SEM imaging (since it would have provided better contrast). I'm not super familiar with PES but it could very well be a better choice too!
First we're oxidising samples in two steps.
1. H202 50% at 50 °C
2. NaClO 12 % Cl at room temperature for 6 days
Then the sample is density seperated with sodium polytungstate (1,7 g/mL) and a centrifuge (5 min, 2400 rpm).
The Sample is then frozen over night.
With warm water the upper fraction is thawed.
The sample is transferred to a 10 μm Si-filter and analyzed with μ-Ramanspectroscopy.
Interesting way of find diatoms. I can't see backscattered electrons with my SEM now. I need to try. Best regards.
Team Trees. Team Seas. Team Bees?
Hey, if they redeem themselves with this one, _I'm not holding my breath,_ I would support a bee movement.
So, only the bad taste from the last one and like 30 million pounds of in ocean plastic to go...................
This was the best team seas vid I've seen so far.
Probably also the only one doing any real science, and not just pandering for views and likes
@@gorak9000 Yes! Exactly!
Do you think a glass filter on your vacuum filtering apparatus could ease up the process?
Add table salt and warm up the water-oil-mixture, this breaks up the emulsion and aids separation.
I was thinking the same thing, but it never occurred to me to leave a comment. 🤦
That was interesting. I think lard would be better than the freezing olive oil method. It is liquid at about 95f, then after mixing stick it in the fridge. Then pull the solid fat off the top.
I wonder if a ceramic filter might be better- a disc of porcelain should have very tiny pores, but because it is made of metal oxides it would have strong backscatter, silhouetting the darker plastics- and have a much simpler, less cluttered background.
100% agree! In retrospect porcelain or glass filter would have worked a lot better. Live and learn I suppose :)
HDPE mentioned at 2:56 is actually a relatively low density plastic (it is still polyethylene) and would float in just normal water, but especially salt water. Teflon (PTFE) is quite dense, but "high density polyethylene" is kind of a misnomer, or at least a misleading name.
Is it more correct to call it high molecular weight polyethylene? I mean it stands to reason that in the largest chain length range, the density actually changes very very little.
@@SianaGearz mmm, kinda but not really, given the names of other versions of polyethylene around it in the molecular weight distribution.
The problem is global in so much as it relies on every country to manage their waste in landfills or incinerators in a responsible manner. Anyway you slice the issue, plastics are cheap and useful, especially in science (laboratory), food industry and health fields. There is no cheap or practical work around in most cases.
The problem is many of these countries around the world don't give a shit about where they throw their plastic. When I was in Europe I couldn't believe how much plastic just gets tossed on the side or thrown into the water. As bad as United States is in some things I don't think I can recall seeing plastic thrown around in the way I've seen in some places in Europe.
Yeah good luck getting India and china to do anything useful.
The most annoying thing is that plastics can be avoided in most cases. Apart from some applications like medical, anything from nylon fabrics to plastic bottles to plastic utensils can be replaced by natural fibers, wood and glass among other materials. Of course price is the main factor, but I think it just sucks that that's what it comes down to, cost.
@@horacegentleman3296 : Two asian coastal nations are the biggest plastics litterers, but India and China weren't on the list, it was some of the medium-sized ones. I don't remember which they were, but you can find references online if you feel like digging into it.
I have not taken high school or College chemistry. My AA Degree is in Electrical Engineering.
I have seen, on video, where the automated recycle machines uses static electricity and air puffs to separate plastic from trash. I am wondering if it would be feasible to shake the dirt sample through a narrow screen. Placing a charged plate to one side, thus catching the plastic. You might have to have a magnetic loop between the falling sample and charged plate. This inducing em into the conductive(metallic) fragments and catching them allowing the non-conductive plastic particles to pass through to the charged plate.
Have you tried fritted glass filters? Just a thought....also, I'm sure there's some stains (including fluorescent ones) that will make plastics far more visible...
Perhaps a heated sample holder can expose plastic particles through their change in thermal expansion, or merely by making them melt into beads?
Actually, just the second video I’ve seen on this.
Thankfully the first for me. I try to filter out the clickbait/spam from my subscriptions feed, so "big" channels like MrBeast, etc just don't even show up anymore, and most folks associated with them as well
thx
A centrifuge does not seperate into solids and liquids! By spinning you separate by density. So that thin white solid layer is lighter than water but heavier than the oil. So that was perhaps mostly plastic?
I LOVE MICROPLASTICS !!!!
THIS is how you find micro plastics, not just letting dust settle on a surface and making a click bait video
Really cool video and project! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Have you considered staining your purified sample with Nile Red and then observing under a fluorescence microscope? That would provide you with more specificity as to the particles you examine (plastics shine red when illuminated with green light).
Thanks! It was on the todo list, but I was under a tight deadline for this particular project and my order of NileRed didn't get here in time :( I might do a followup though, have been noodling over some microfluidic designs that could be interesting to combine with fluorescent staining.
could you use a ceramic filter, so that the filter itself would appear brighter than the plastics on the SEM? could you view those samples in visible light to identify plastics by their colors?
Perhaps fiberglass can be used for vacuum filtration filters?
An average human consumes (eats and inhales) about 5 grams of microplastic a week.
😋 mmm modernity is delicious.
Raman!
This old Tony thumbnail?
Oh my goodness, I thought the thumbnail looked vaguely familiar after I added the "scream" emoji. You're right, this is like 100% ToT thumbnail. Whoops! 🤦♂️
And good point, raman would be a good method, assuming you can get your crosshairs on individual particles without interference from other particles or the filter I assume? I actually don't know a ton about Raman spectroscopy!
@@BreakingTaps edge filter from edmund or semrock, an infinity corrected objective, eBay 785 fiber laser, and a ocean optics, your ready to go!
What SEM are you using?
I wonder if it's possible to heat the stuff up just enough to melt the plastic while in a centrifuge to get it out with less of the other stuff in it.
What if you vacuum-dry the oil micro plastic suspension? No filters necessary.
Have you tried spun glass fiber, or fiberglass as a strainer for the plastics, also....for how long have these plastics been around, that is in historic 100 year old dirt, frozen water or sludge, or old sealed glass or clay containers? Is bakelite the oldest plastic like material, or could any plastic be naturally occurring like in crude oil? Just curious...👍👍
If you could get the plastics in a water phase would simply dehydrating them on a glass slide remove the need for filtration?
Yep! That was my original plan for the centrifugation: spin them down into a pellet, resuspend with water (+detergent) and repeat a few times. Eventually you just have water and plastic, which you could dry or vacuum filter or whatever. I think that would also work well, I just took a shortcut because I was running low on time and it ended up working :)
try foam fractioning, cuts the oil phase out.
and does not require filter papers per se, just let it dry out with desiccant and time.
That would be lovely, i rather dislike vacuum filter heh. I saw that method when skimming the literature, but wasn't sure about the "foaming" agent they use to float the plastic... do you happen to know if it's easy/simple to obtain? Think I remember something about Pine oil maybe?
@@BreakingTaps You got simple green to foam pretty well, wouldn't that work?
It would also clean your plastic up in the process ;)
@@BreakingTaps if its seawater / sealine solution you most likely won require a foaming agent. You bubble air into the solution, which foams the liquid. Particles stick to the bubbles surface due to surface tension and rise to the top.
Look at a marine fish tank protein skimmer as reference.
in marine biology we used that to get diatoms, plankton and other particulates out of the water. The sizes you mention fit the profile pretty well.
Bless the disclaimer, I've been wondering if folks were aware of the ecological and political complications going on
What if you heated the concentrate to melt the micro plastic into larger chunks?
Ref 17:30
If you need a detergent that do not fume use dishwasher soap. :-)
I have to wonder about glass fiber filters for this technique. Maybe that would help on the SEM side.
Oh yeah, that absolutely would have helped :) Would have given a much better contrast difference between the plastic and the background of the filter. Wish I would have thought of that at the time! 😅
did you try warming up the olive oil slightly before filtering it?
Did you try gently heating the oil for the vacuum filtration?
The answer to plastic waste is to find a profitable use for it.
Adding Sucrose to a saturated Sodium Chloride solution will increase the density by about 10%. Calcium Chloride makes up a saturated solution that is 121% the density of Sodium Chloride those should get your heavier plasics. on your flotation method.
While conventional methods of lye, hydrogen peroxide, and nitric acid aren't the least bit green you need to see how plastic you're missing with any method you. destroying every ting else you can in the sample is one way to do it.
So it's like some next level of
looking for a needle in a haystack when you just get sand and look for sand-like plastic in sand 😅
ive been following ocean cleanup since the beginning. they've had some major obstacles to overcome because no one has ever tried what theyre doing. with the new Jenny system 002, they are already removing tons of plastics, and no aquatic life, from the pacific garbage patch. i tip my hat to the CEO for tackling this huge problem, and now they have a proven prototype. lets keep this going!!!!!!!
So… do you… own that SEM? Because the concept of personally owning such an amazing instrument is really quite the dream.
Logically, if plastics break down to micro plastics, then it should continue breaking down further.
And it should go much faster, because of larger surface.
Aside from generally spreading awareness, this video has by far been the most educational and I feel like there is more you could do on the subject. Perhaps do your addendum comment in a video with some revised experimentation.
Thanks! I wasn't originally intending to, but there are a lot of interesting followups, and it would be good to address some of the comments/concerns/suggestions that have been generated. A lot of good points have been raised, both technically and politically/economically. Might try my hand at some fluorescent staining and microfluidics, we'll see!
it would be cool to see possible candidates for bacteria and enzymes to "eat" microplastics
Go #TeamSeas
Oh good we're forming committees to oversee the formation of committees to discuss the potential for a committee on establishing a timeline for a committee tasked with investigating actions to be taken. And here I was afraid something might get done...
You need to heat oils to run them through a filter paper
Why did you use extra virgin olive oil? Wouldn't it be much better and easier to use purified/processed oils instead?
I think you may have come down a bit hard on the ocean cleanup. I've read some articles about it and it really sounds like biologists and journalists talking about a system they know nothing about. They like to just call it a trawling net or deep sea fishing like you said. But in reality the actual net opening is a small fraction of the overall collection swath. They also spent a lot of the original money trying to make it autonomous wind and wave powered. They built a prototype and found out that it just wasn't going to work so they made the right decision and pivoted to a powered system for now to start collecting plastic and improve the design later. They had a plan and that plan turned out not to work but they quickly pivoted and got a baseline design that works. Id hardly say they are wasting money because they could still be chasing the original design and have nothing collected.
The issue is that their surface trawling is incredibly harmful to neuston and other surface-dwelling populations, which they at first entirely neglected to assess. This betrays a huge ignorance of how the ocean works, and indicates they are not actively consulting proper marine biology experts. There is an entire ecosystem that lives or procreates near the surface and you can't just surface-trawl the ocean without catching them. They only looked into it after being hounded by marine biologists for years, at which point their own environmental impact study showed large bycatch and a very harmful impact. But they decided their own impact study was insufficient and needed "more study", which they used as justification to continue with the surface collection project. Their own press photos show bycatch in their nets.
Their Interceptor is a better system, but still a poor knock off of Mr. Trash Wheel, and they have ignored criticisms of the design (reaches too far into the river mouth, etc). They have spent millions more on their Interceptor platform than Mr Trash Wheel and collected an order of magnitude less trash. Their System 002 has an even worse $:lbs ratio. They are incredibly money-inefficient.
I don't think the organization is actively malicious, but I do think they are largely incompetent and not consulting with existing experts in the field. A bad case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Cleaning up trash is not helpful if it eradicates the neuston population for example, especially when it's a literal drop in the ocean compared to actual trash flows. There are many better organizations that are more effective, and active partners with marine biologists. And those organizations don't respond to criticism by attacking individual scientists or journalists.
@@BreakingTaps So you're against actual fishing, right? I assume from the context of what you're saying that if you're against the incidental death of marine life, you'd also be against people intentionally killing them. Right?
@@introprospector I don't really support factory fishing the oceans, no. And I don't eat much seafood, particularly ocean-caught. But that's really tangential to the point and a distraction: an attempt to de-plastic the ocean by killing vast swaths of surface populations is not productive, particularly because it's heinously expensive and not very effective at catching that plastic trash in the first place. If it was actually effective and cheap we might have a different conversation about the merits of the program vs wildlife harm, but as it stands it's literally bad at every metric that matters: cost, waste removal, bycatch.
It's also not addressing the much larger problem in my eyes (microplastics) which can only be prevented by stopping plastics at their source. Interceptors are an ok'ish bandaid, but the real change is legislation and making companies accountable (see pinned comment).
Surface trawling the ocean is a distraction in both money and public goodwill, and harmful to wildlife populations to boot.
@@BreakingTaps Why do we care about those wildlife populations at all? Is our goal to de-plastic the oceans merely out of selfish, human centered self furtherance?
Fyi most seafood doesn't end up on your plate. It's mostly used for products like fish oil, fertilizer, glue, cat food and animal feed. Farmed fish in particular must be fed wild caught fish that are unsuitable for humans.
All these people criticizing the incidental death of wildlife while intentionally murdering fish and land animals in vast quantities are hypocrites. Environmental crisis is the inevitable result of treating the planet and it's inhabitants as resources to be exploited.
@@introprospector seriously? "Why do we care about those wildlife populations at all?"
Why are we deplasticizing the ocean and killing that wildlife if we don't even know for sure that the plastic will even do as much harm as some hypothesize?
No wonder he didn't respond, such a ridiculous question.
Why shouldn't we care about the wildlife in our oceans?
The fact that the plastics charge does this manifest itself in the image in a way that could help ? maybe at lower energies ? just wondering....cheers.
Good idea! Potentially, if you used a conductive filter (maybe a fiberglass filter that was precoated with silver?). I had to use high-pressure mode to image these to reduce charging effects because I didn't want to coat them, so all the filters materials charged up heavily as well if I went to a higher vacuum mode. But if you instead used a conductive filter that might be a viable way to help sift through the material. Sand and glass charges up too, but likely to a different extent than plastic.
@@BreakingTaps Indeed, charging is a problem that could useful for once !
I don't doubt your sincerity to contribute to cleaner seas, Zach. But this being an initiative of MrBeast and Mark Rober? Seriously? Two youtubers that have- and still are pubishing videos where waste and excessive consumption are glorified? These guys seriously have nothing with sustainability. Which makes me wonder about their real motives.
I don't know their intentions either (although I have some opinions), but I do know that myself and a large group of science/education creators agonized behind the scenes for the last two weeks about this campaign and if we should participate. There are overarching problems with the approach, and there are specific problems with the chosen non-profit organizations. The marine biologists were horrified that TOC was being included for example, and everyone was generally disappointed this was a TeamTrees 2.0 rehash with most of the same problems.
But realistically, this campaign was going to happen whether we participated or not, as we were only informed two weeks ago and it was being planned for better part of a year. I decided to throw my voice into the mix so that I could A) demonstrate that the issue of microplastics is not as simple as collecting them with a net and B) TOC is a poor contribution target, despite what the campaign suggests.
Regardless of who's running the campaign, microplastics really _are_ a problem. I weighed my choices and decided that staying silent was not helpful, but stealing some of the generated traffic from the campaign could be used for real education about the problem and organizations involved.
Perhaps it was the wrong choice, I'm not sure. But that's was my thought process and where I landed :)
@@BreakingTaps The dilemma is that you can't always choose your partners when doing this kind of thing. But I guess it's about creating awareness mostly, which your video certainly did!
Bitcoin motives. Just a hunch.
@@BreakingTaps Beautiful reply. Thank you.
Like you, I'm not convinced that this campaign is going to solve anything.. but it may very well inspire the individuals and the research which will.
I just realized we posted videos about this on nearly the same day except I didn't properly prepare for the experiment portion and failed miserably ha!
As I understand the process it could be more efficient the less viscous the oil.
It appears that you could also sift the sediment for valuable minerals but how profitable this could be I do not know, however most of the world's gold and thorium are in it.
More G's would separate the components by density. I worked at a lab with a 500,000 G centrifuge, that thing could seperate out aaaaaaaaaanything.
They were using it to separate different elemental isotopes. *anything*.
can you seperate high melting point metal isotopes with it? say iridium? I need pure Ir193
Some clever bacteria in Japanese rivers figured out how to munch down on nylon for lunch, once other bacteria figureout the other plastics we're good. But yes more needs to be done.
dish washer machine soap has low bubbles.
Science side of youtube kinda feels like the adult version of 5th grade science fairs.
should take some laundry washer water discharge and let it evaporate off of glass or something. of course from washing a load of synthetic fiber clothes.
So why ingestion is the problem if plastic is inert?
0:46 - look at the self-satisfied pr!ck of an Otter, just smugly doing that meme!
_MORE MICRO PLASTICS!_
raise the temp to around 200 C this will melt and combine the plastics
First radiation in bananas, now plastic in the food. I'm curious what we'll come up next with for killing ourselves from the inside.
What about combing the process and then adding the recently discovered bacteria (ideonella sakaiensis) which digest PET plastics to the concentrated pellets?
A good thing to consider, but plastics disposal is realistically a distinct step from plastics isolation, since isolating them is in many ways the most challenging step.
raise awareness lol. I dont think people have the attention span for that to do anything. Awareness gets raised, people get upset, then they move onto the next problem du jour
Mind if I ask how much your SEM cost?
I have a Thermo Phenom (XL model). Depends on how you fit them out, but the Pure models start at like 80k USD, Pro/XL are closer to 100k, and the really fancy Pharos is like 200k. You can get used models for considerably cheaper from the vendors though, if you don't mind reduced resolution from older machines (I saw quotes for last-gen Pures at like 30-40k USD).
But yeah, way more expensive than picking up an old analog SEM off ebay or something :)
@@BreakingTaps next question is how you justified spending 80k!
"nano particles potato". TELL ME MORE!!!
😇
in the oil extraction process demonstration you should have initially put the plastic bits into water and then show that they could be pulled into oil if you mix them. putting plastic into oil to start with is kinda like cheating