VARIATION OF DISPERSANTS IN MICROPLASTIC MEASUREMENT BASED ON IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES IN SURFACE WATER

• Main Author: Hapsari Yulistyani, Farah
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknik saniter dan perkotaan; teknik perlindungan lingkungan
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/86292
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of publications on microplastic abundance research in the environment as microplastics have become a major environmental problem. To quantify microplastics rapidly, accurately, and practically, the image processing technique (IPT) is one effective method. IPT uses live imaging and the ImageJ application to count microplastic particles in water. This method requires an appropriate dispersant to ensure that microplastic particles can be evenly dispersed and identified in the region of interest (ROI). This research focuses on determining the optimum dispersant for polystyrene (PS) and polyamide (PA) microplastics. A very strong correlation was obtained between the concentration/mass of artificial samples of PS and PA microplastics and the number of quantified particles, with an R² value>0,75 and a correlation test showing a p-value<0,05; indicating a significant linear relationship. The t-test results showed p-value>0,05 for artificial samples, indicating no significant difference between the quantification results obtained with IPT and the microscope. However, for surface water samples, IPT resulted in higher particle counts than microscope since the microscope could not identify particles <10 ?m. The t-test for surface water samples showed a p-value <0,05 for particles ?10 ?m, indicating a significant difference between quantification using IPT and the microscope due to the identification of all types of microplastics in the quantification of river samples by the microscope.