InMyWaves · Inertial effects on settling of microplastics in turbulent wavy flows
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-09-01 → 2025-08-31
- EU contribution
- €224,991
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
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Results in brief
Inertial effects on settling of microplastics in turbulent wavy flows
Plastic pollution in rivers, lakes, and oceans is a growing environmental crisis with serious implications for ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, and human health. Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic enter aquatic systems, where they break down into smaller pieces that can persist for decades. These particles do not remain where they enter the water. Instead, they are carried by currents, waves, and turbulence, sometimes traveling long distances before accumulating in coastal zones, river mouths, or the open ocean. Despite the scale of this challenge, our ability to predict the pathways of plastics in natural waters is limited. Most studies so far have focused on floating plastics or very small particles in idealised turbulence setting. However, these approaches do not capture the complexity of real aquatic environments, where plastics of different shapes, sizes, and densities are influenced by turbulence, current and surface waves. This knowledge gap makes it difficult to model plastic pathways accurately which in turn hampers strategies to mitigate their impact on ecosystems, food safety, and human health.. The InMyWaves project (Inertial effects on settling of microplastics in turbulent wavy flows) set out to address this gap through carefully designed laboratory experiments. The main objectives were to: 1) Identify the particle properties that dominate settling behaviour. 2) Determine how turbulence modifies the settling and dispersion of plastics compared to quiescent flows. 3) Investigate how the combined effects of turbulence and surface waves influence plastic transport. By answering these questions, the project aimed to provide new knowledge that improves plastic transport models. The long-term goal is to support more reliable predictions of plastic pollution pathways to predict where plastics will accumulate or how quickly they will disperse, helping society to better protect and manage aquatic environments.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Millions of tons of plastic waste have been found in our oceans over the past 10 years, posing ingestion hazards to marine organisms and our food chain. These plastics enter the ocean either as microplastics (< 5 mm in size) or larger plastics which slowly disintegrate into smaller particles before sinking to the ocean bed due to polymer disintegration and biofouling. While past studies primarily focused on floating debris, the settling dynamics of microplastics below waves, which are turbulent in nature, are not well known. Although models exist and this problem has been looked at, due to the challenges in simulating finite-size particles, point-particle assumptions are generally applied in the analytical and numerical modeling of particle-laden flow. This neglects the effects of particle inertia. Moreover, the combined influence of waves and turbulence on particles of various shapes and sizes has never been coupled. This is a major deficiency in the state-of-the-art. Hence, in this work, I will focus on particle inertia, free stream turbulence, and the combined effects of waves, to pinpoint the key parameters that govern the particle motion in wavy turbulent flows. To represent the microplastics, various modeled particles will be fabricated and tested first in a quiescent flow. These particles will then be released into the large-scale water channel facility at NTNU subjected to free stream turbulence and waves. Two series of experiments will be conducted using advanced flow and wave imaging techniques to track the particle, turbulence, and wave motions simultaneously. The results of this work will lead to improved models for simulating the transport of plastic waste and pollutants in rivers and oceanic flows by incorporating the dominant parameters that have previously been neglected. It will also bridge the understanding between both oceanic and turbulence communities on the transport of microplastics.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU · TrondheimCoordinatorNorway
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101107440
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e509530b07&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e520237533&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union