Centrifugation on Microplastics: A Novel System for Extracting Microplastics from Environmental Water

Overview

Microplastics is one of humanity’s biggest problems when it comes to pollution. Millions of animals, and thousands of people are victims of plastic pollution. From pollution to cancer, microplastics are a problem we need to address immediately before it is too late. Microplastics are already becoming the leading cause for various medical issues. This experiment has an innovative idea to remove microplastics from the environment. This method targets runoff and wastewater, which have been deadly to millions of ocean animals and in turn humans. The objective of this experiment is to find the most effective way to remove microplastics from the environment. The new idea proposed by the experiment is to use the centrifuge to remove microplastics. This method was compared with filtration, boiling, and the natural environment where microplastics are not currently removed. It was hypothesized that centrifugation would lead to the cleanest water since the denser microplastics would be grouped at the bottom, making the siphoned water the cleanest. As expected, the hypothesis was supported by the results. The water that went through centrifugation was the cleanest. Filtration using the metal mesh filter came second, boiling came third, and the control group came last given that it is the status quo. The valuable information from the experiment will be used to both build a device and on a large scale, use this device to remove the microplastics from the environment on the water seeping into our oceans. The device will be installed in streams, runoffs, and wastewater pipes where microplastics will be removed from the water before it reaches a larger body such as a creek or the bay. The device will be run with full waterpower as it will have blades on the sides to power the centrifuge. Water will run through 4 stages of centrifugation before it reaches a larger aquatic expanse. This method will work efficiently, in under ten seconds, to remove almost all microplastics from the water. Ultimately, the results of the experiment are essential as this is a viable new solution to save millions of species around the globe.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Environmental Engineering (Track 2) (Junior Division) · Entry J-12-14

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Environmental Engineering projects
• CSEF Environmental Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project