TY - JOUR A1 - Paul, Andrea A1 - Wander, Lukas A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Goedecke, Caroline A1 - Braun, Ulrike T1 - High-throughput NIR spectroscopic (NIRS) detection of microplastics in soil N2 - The increasing pollution of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with plastic debris leads to the accumulation of microscopic plastic particles of still unknown amount. To monitor the degree of contamination analytical methods are urgently needed, which help to quantify microplastics (MP). Currently, time-costly purified materials enriched on filters are investigated both by micro-infrared spectroscopy and/or micro-Raman. Although yielding precise results, these techniques are time consuming, and are restricted to the analysis of a small part of the sample in the order of few micrograms. To overcome these problems, here we tested a macroscopic dimensioned NIR process-spectroscopic method in combination with chemometrics. For calibration, artificial MP/soil mixtures containing defined ratios of polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, and polystyrene with diameters < 125 µm were prepared and measured by a process FT-NIR spectrometer equipped with a fiber optic reflection probe. The resulting spectra were processed by chemometric models including support vector machine regression (SVR), and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Validation of models by MP mixtures, MP-free soils and real-world samples, e.g. and fermenter residue, suggest a reliable detection and a possible classification of MP at levels above 0.5 to 1.0 mass% depending on the polymer. The benefit of the combined NIRS chemometric approach lies in the rapid assessment whether soil contains MP, without any chemical pre-treatment. The method can be used with larger sample volumes and even allows for an online prediction and thus meets the demand of a high-throughput method. KW - Microplastics KW - Soil KW - Chemometrics KW - PLS-DA KW - Support vector machines KW - Near Infrared Spectroscopy PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2180-2 SN - 1614-7499 SN - 0944-1344 VL - 26 IS - 8 SP - 7364 EP - 7374 PB - Springer AN - OPUS4-45405 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mueller, Axel A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Dorgerloh, Ute A1 - Simon, Franz-Georg A1 - Braun, Ulrike T1 - The effect of polymer aging on the uptake of fuel aromatics and ethers by microplastics N2 - Microplastics are increasingly entering marine, limnic and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide, where they sorb hydrophobic organic contaminants. Here, the sorption behavior of the fuel-related water contaminants benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene (BTEX) and four tertiary butyl ethers to virgin and via UV radiation aged polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) pellets was investigated. Changes in material properties due to aging were recorded using appropriate polymer characterization methods, such as differential scanning calorimetry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and microscopy. Pellets were exposed to water containing BTEX and the ethers at 130-190 mg/L for up to two weeks. Aqueous sorbate concentrations were determined by headspace gas chromatography. Sorption to the polymers was correlated with the sorbate's Kow and was significant for BTEX and marginal for the ethers. Due to substantially lower glass transition temperatures, PP showed higher sorption than PS. Aging had no effect on the sorption behavior of PP. PS sorbed less BTEX after aging due to an oxidized surface layer. KW - BTEX KW - Polypropylene KW - Polystyrene KW - Sorption KW - Degradation PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.04.127 SN - 0269-7491 VL - 240 SP - 639 EP - 646 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-44990 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Scholz, Philipp A1 - Wachtendorf, Volker A1 - Elert, Anna Maria A1 - Falkenhagen, Jana A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Hoffmann, Katrin A1 - Resch-Genger, Ute A1 - Tschiche, Harald A1 - Reinsch, Stefan A1 - Weidner, Steffen ED - Scholz, Philipp T1 - Analytical toolset to characterize polyurethanes after exposure to artificial weathering under systematically varied moisture conditions N2 - Polyether and -ester urethanes (PU) were exposed to artificial weathering at 40 °C and artificial UV radiation in a weathering chamber. In 3 parallel exposures, humidity was varied between dry, humid, and wet conditions. Material alteration was investigated by various analytical techniques like size exclusion chromatography (SEC), liquid chromatography-infrared spectroscopy (LC-FTIR), thermal-desorption gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS), fluorescence mapping and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Our results show that depending on the weathering conditions, different degradation effects can be observed. By means of SEC an initial strong decrease of the molar masses and a broadening of the mass distributions was found. After a material dependent time span this was followed by a plateau where molar mass changes were less significant. A minor moisture-dependent degradation effect was only found for polyester PU. Fluorescence measurements on two materials revealed an increase in the luminescence intensity upon weathering process reaching a saturation level after about 500 h. The changes in the optical properties observed after different exposure conditions and times were very similar. The TD-GC-MS data showed the fate of the stabilizers and antioxidant in the course of weathering. LC-FTIR measurements revealed a change in peak intensities and the ratio of urethane and carbonyl bands. KW - Polyurethane KW - Artificial weathering KW - Moisture KW - Crosslinking KW - Degradation PY - 2019 UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142941819303708 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2019.105996 SN - 0142-9418 VL - 78 SP - 105996, 1 EP - 9 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-48625 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -