  Nanoplastics are emerging contaminants that have now transformed into a
worldwide environmental concern. It is a lesser-known fact that several
emerging contaminants, such as bisphenol and perfluoro alkylates adsorbing on
micro and nanoplastics, could invade the food chain and cause irreversible
damage to human health and the environment. Even though wastewater treatment
plants (WWTPs) have been around for a long time, their removal strategy needs
to be improved since this is one of the main routes that micro and nanoplastics
get into the environment. UV deterioration, mechanical stresses, and biological
processes cause plastics to break apart and turn into smaller pieces. They get
small enough to be called nanoplastics, i.e. 1 um. We studied the removal of
nanoplastics from synthetic wastewater using an electrocoagulation process. We
used the polystyrene nanoparticles as nanoplastics synthesized from the
expanded polystyrene waste (EPS). For studies on electrocoagulation (EC),
aluminium electrodes were used in parallel combination at low voltage
conditions. We take advantage of the release of gas bubbles from the process to
enable the removal from the top by scraping them off. We studied the influence
of various process parameters on removing nanoplastics, such as electrode
spacing, salt concentration, and applied voltage. We found that a maximum
removal efficiency of more than 95% could be achieved at a specific electrolyte
concentration and pH of 7.2 +/- 0.3, illustrating that EC is a successful
technique for removing nanoplastic pollutants from the aquatic environment. The
advantage of the proposed method is that when nanoplastics and coagulants are
mixed, they help make a foamy layer on top of the reactor that can be easily
scraped off. The results of this study could serve as baseline information for
achieving massive nanoplastics cleanup on a larger scale in an eco-friendly
way.
