oa A Novel Procedure for Relative Mass Quantification of Textile Microfibers Released from Washing Machines

The main idea of this work is now to propose a quick-look analytical method to quantify microfiber contents in real case laundry wastewater. Pure natural (cotton, linen) and synthetic (polyester PET, viscose, nylon PA) textiles as well as real case laundry wastewater pre-filtered on silica membranes were analyzed using a pyrolysis and oxidation based-method: the Rock-Eval® device. In this study, a novel procedure based on Rock-Eval® parameters was carried out for relative mass quantification of textile microfibers emitted from washing machines. Specific linear regression coefficients were defined for each investigated natural (cotton, linen) and synthetic (polyester PET, viscose, nylon PA) microfibers. These coefficients were used for the relative mass quantification of textile microfibers from real case laundry wastewater previously deposited on silica filtration membranes. Such coefficients can be used as references for further research based on Rock-Eval® analysis for microplastics. Natural microfibers were the most dominant textile fabric in the investigated laundry wastewater