• Squid-bone sponge found to soak up 99.8 percent of microplastics. Dezeen Rima Sabina Aouf 12-18-204

     A sponge made from a fusion of cotton fibre and squid bone could help to clear some of the world's microplastic pollution after a team of Chinese researchers found it can soak up as much as 99.8 per cent of the particles from water samples. Researchers from the University of Wuhan and Guangxi University produced the fibrous foam by combining cellulose fibres from cotton and the tough biopolymer chitin, which forms a squid's skeleton.When deployed in water, the sponge was found to remove between 98 and 99.8 per cent of microplastics, and the researchers believe the material's low cost and simple production could allow it to be scaled up for widespread use.                                                                                             
  • "Few practical technologies" for removal of microplastics - Cellulose and chitin are two very abundant molecules in nature and are already often used to help cleanse pollutants from wastewater. The researchers' innovation involved combining the two in a way that offers unprecedented efficacy at cleaning up microplastics – the tiny plastic particles that have pervaded the environment, posing a significant risk to ecosystems and human health. "The planet is under great threat from microplastics," the researchers wrote in their paper in the journal Science Advances. "And aquatic ecosystems are the first to suffer as they provide convenient places for microplastics, which can combine with other contaminants and be ingested by multiple levels of organisms.
  • "Currently, there are few practical technologies for efficient and extensive removal of microplastics, especially for those smaller than 10 [micrometres]." Although the cellulose and chitin are fused on a molecular level to make the "Ct-Cel biomass foam", the production process was completed using readily available equipment. The researchers say that this – combined with the low cost of the abundant materials and their non-toxic, biocompatible nature – means that the foam could avoid the problems that have hampered other solutions from gaining traction outside of the lab."These works generally involved complex fabrication procedures or expensive raw materials, and the investment might be unaffordable for large-scale remediation of microplastics," they wrote. Biomass sponge is made simply and cheaply....read on
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