NREL researchers Ali Chamas and Clarissa Lincoln use tweezers to remove plastic debris from samples from the Delaware River for analysis. The WaterPACT project is investigating plastic pollution in U.S. rivers. Photo by Josh Bauer, NREL
“Our hope is to understand the problem enough to do something about it,” Maurer said. “We don’t have the perfect solution yet, but waiting for perfect is pointless. We know enough today to make fewer mistakes moving forward and to start developing solutions, both upstream and downstream.”WaterPACT scientists realized early in their research that data on the types and concentrations of plastics in U.S. rivers did not exist on a comprehensive, national scale.
“There is a tremendous amount of plastics in the samples we collected,” said Ali Chamas, reflecting on his field work on the Los Angeles River in 2023. Chamas is a chemical engineering postdoctoral researcher at NREL in his third year with the WaterPACT project. “My main objective is to help the community and general public understand the scale of this problem. I’m hopeful that this will stir some development or interest in the area and lead to more people working to combat this.
To solve this dilemma, the team developed a clever, two-step biological digestion process that removed the plant material but left the plastic intact for analysis. “After the digestion, we do most of our hand sorting,” Lincoln said. “We’ve found it easiest to take really small amounts of this digested material, like a pinch smaller than the size of a pencil eraser, put it in a petri dish, and add water. This allows us to disperse the material so that the pieces don’t overlap.”
“Among the myriad environmental ramifications stemming from plastic waste, microplastic pollution stands out as particularly enduring,” said Kat Knauer, chief technology officer of BOTTLE and polymer scientist at NREL. “We are finding microplastics virtually everywhere, including in our own bodies, and we do not yet understand the long-term health and environmental effects of these pollutants. We just know they shouldn’t be there.
The resulting methodology involves analyzing the water samples for additives, degradation products, manufacturing byproducts, and vector chemicals like pesticides and pharmaceuticals carried by plastic particles.
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