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Presentation Type
Presentation
Full Name of Faculty Mentor
George Hitt, Physics and Engineering Science
Major
Applied Physics
Presentation Abstract
It's no secret: microplastics are everywhere. Currently, sieves and sifters are unable to filter microplastics smaller than 63 μm, slightly smaller than the diameter of a human hair, out of sediment. Intuition would say microplastic in the environment is a bad thing, but that is just the problem—we don't know. Samples of microplastics smaller than 63 μm that are large enough to conduct biological and chemical analysis on have not yet been accumulated from sediment. In this research study, we are using microfluidic chips to investigate ways to passively sort microplastic types, in an effort to collect a large enough sample of microplastics so that proper scientific analysis can be performed. The microfluidic chips are devices made of fluid carrying channels, designed and fabricated using techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry. We are exploring implementing various passive separation and sorting functions to apply to microplastic assay.
Location
Virtual Session Room 1
Start Date
22-4-2021 3:00 PM
End Date
22-4-2021 3:20 PM
Recommended Citation
Mitchell, Grant, "Microfluidic Microplastic Separation" (2021). Undergraduate Research Competition. 21.
https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/ugrc/2021/fullconference/21
Microfluidic Microplastic Separation
Virtual Session Room 1
It's no secret: microplastics are everywhere. Currently, sieves and sifters are unable to filter microplastics smaller than 63 μm, slightly smaller than the diameter of a human hair, out of sediment. Intuition would say microplastic in the environment is a bad thing, but that is just the problem—we don't know. Samples of microplastics smaller than 63 μm that are large enough to conduct biological and chemical analysis on have not yet been accumulated from sediment. In this research study, we are using microfluidic chips to investigate ways to passively sort microplastic types, in an effort to collect a large enough sample of microplastics so that proper scientific analysis can be performed. The microfluidic chips are devices made of fluid carrying channels, designed and fabricated using techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry. We are exploring implementing various passive separation and sorting functions to apply to microplastic assay.