Erosion as a possible mechanism for the decrease of size of plastic pieces floating in oceans
2018
Resmeriță, Ana-Maria | Coroaba, Adina | Darie, Raluca | Doroftei, Florica | Spiridon, Iuliana | Simionescu, Bogdan C. | Navard, Patrick
A sea water wave tank fitted in an artificial UV light weathering chamber was built to study the behaviour of polypropylene (PP) injected pieces in close ocean-like conditions. In air, the same pieces sees a degradation in the bulk with a decrease of mechanical properties, a little change of crystal properties and nearly no change of surface chemistry. Weathering in the sea water wave tank shows only a surface changes, with no effect on crystals or mechanical properties with loss of small pieces of matter in the sub-micron range and a change of surface chemistry. This suggests an erosion dispersion mechanism. Such mechanism could explain why no particle smaller than about one millimeter is found when collecting plastic debris at sea: there are much smaller, eroded from plastic surfaces by a mechano-chemical process similar to the erosion mechanism found in the dispersion of agglomerate under flow.
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