Experiment: Remove microplastics from water with yeast
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Objective: In this science project, you’ll investigate how much yeast is needed to remove microplastics from contaminated water.Areas of science: Environmental Science; Green ChemistryDifficulty: Intermediate easyTime required: Very Short (≤ 1 day)Prerequisites: NoneMaterial availability: Assistance ordering materials needed.
See the materials list for details.Cost: Very Low (under $20)Safety: No issuesCredits: Teisha Rowland, PhD, Science Buddies Plastic pollution is a major issue worldwide, and plastic production has been increasing for decades. Mass production of plastic is not sustainable for the environment, and recycling plastic alone will not address the problem of plastic pollution. Plastic pollution has negative effects on the environment, impacting ecosystems and the organisms in them, including us.
Although we do not currently know whether plastics alone are harmful to human health, emerging research suggests they may be associated with human immune disorders and developmental, reproductive and neurological issues. Better understanding the impacts on animal and human health is an active area of research. Why is plastic pollution such a big problem?
Some plastics take an extremely long time to break down, or degrade, and even this process itself can cause problems. Plastics can break down into microplastics, tiny pieces 5 millimeters (0.2 inch [in]) or smaller. Microplastics may not only contain harmful chemicals but can also bind to toxins.
While much remains unknown about how microplastics may affect living organisms, ingesting them (and any bound toxins) may be harmful to our bodies and ecosystems. Nearly half of plastic pollution can float, and it ends up in the oceans or washed up on beaches. Ocean microplastics are consumed by a range of marine organisms, including fish, marine mammals and seabirds.
Microplastics may also accumulate in fish that we eat. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gigantic collection of marine debris — plastic and other floating trash — in the central North Pacific Ocean, weighing about 100,000,000 kilograms (kg) (220,000,000 pounds [lbs]). Efforts are underway to tackle this enormous challenge.
By the end of 2024, scientists and others with the Ocean Cleanup project had removed about 500,000 kg (1,100,000 lbs) of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but that was only half a percent of the total amount of garbage! While only about 8 percent of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is microplastics, larger plastic pieces continually break down, creating more microplastics, and these pieces are much harder to clean up. Plastic trash and particles are now found in most marine and terrestrial habitats, including rivers, lakes, ponds, beaches, coral reefs and the deep sea.
What can we do about plastic pollution? In this science project, you will investigate how floating microplastics can be removed from contaminated water. To clean water at a wastewater treatment plant, flocculants are added.
Flocculants clump together with particles floating or suspended in the water. These clumps, called flocs, can then sink and settle to the bottom of a water container, making it easier to remove both the flocculants and the particles. This process is called flocculation.
(Sedimentation is another term used to describe how particles sink and settle at the bottom of a container or body of water.) To help make sure that flocculants do not harm organisms living in or using the water, scientists are investigating using bioremediation instead of chemicals during flocculation. Using organisms (usually microscopic organisms, or microorganisms) to remove environmental pollutants is called bioremediation. Watch the video below to learn more about bioremediation.
In this project, you will investigate how baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can be used as a flocculant to sediment microplastics in contaminated water. For the microplastics, you will use plastic glitter. Figure 4. Set up with a coffee filter sitting inside a strainer, both placed over a large container to collect the liquid that flows through.
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