An integrated chemical engineering approach to understanding microplastics

Environmental and health risks posed by microplastics (MPs) have spurred numerous studies to better understand MPs' properties and behavior. Yet, we still lack a comprehensive understanding due to MP's heterogeneity in properties and complexity of plastic property evolution during aging pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:AIChE journal 2023-04, Vol.69 (4), p.n/a
Main Authors: Bang, Rachel S., Bergman, Michael, Li, Tianyu, Mukherjee, Fiona, Alshehri, Abdulelah S., Abbott, Nicholas L., Crook, Nathan C., Velev, Orlin D., Hall, Carol K., You, Fengqi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial intelligence
biochemical engineering
Biological computing
Chemical engineering
Computer applications
Environmental effects
Health risks
Heterogeneity
interfacial processes
microplastic
Microplastics
Plastic debris
Plastic pollution
Plasticity
thermodynamics/statistical
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Summary:Environmental and health risks posed by microplastics (MPs) have spurred numerous studies to better understand MPs' properties and behavior. Yet, we still lack a comprehensive understanding due to MP's heterogeneity in properties and complexity of plastic property evolution during aging processes. There is an urgent need to thoroughly understand the properties and behavior of MPs as there is increasing evidence of MPs' adverse health and environmental effects. In this perspective, we propose an integrated chemical engineering approach to improve our understanding of MPs. The approach merges artificial intelligence, theoretical methods, and experimental techniques to integrate existing data into models of MPs, investigate unknown features of MPs, and identify future areas of research. The breadth of chemical engineering, which spans biological, computational, and materials sciences, makes it well‐suited to comprehensively characterize MPs. Ultimately, this perspective charts a path for cross‐disciplinary collaborative research in chemical engineering to address the issue of MP pollution.
ISSN:0001-1541
1547-5905
DOI:10.1002/aic.18020