Effects of Polyethylene Microplastics and Natural Sands on the Dispersion of Spilled Oil in the Marine Environment

Abstract

The marine oil transportation and the use of plastic products have been increasing with the development of industrialization, resulting in frequent marine oil spill accidents and a great number of microplastics entering the ocean. The existence of microplastics in the surface seawater might have a certain impact on the migration and transformation of spilled oil. This paper explored the adsorption and aggregation effects of different concentrations of microplastics and natural sands on oil droplets by conical flask oscillation experiments. The results show that the concentration of oil-suspended particulate aggregates (OSA) formed by the spilled oil and microplastics is lower than that of OSA formed with natural sands, where the OSA concentration gradually decreases with the increase of microplastics concentration, ranging from 2.25–6.52%, while it gradually increases with the concentration of natural sands, up to 44.37%, and the particle size of OSA formed is larger in the former than in the latter. The results show that the concentration of oil-suspended particulate aggregates (OSA) formed by the spilled oil with microplastics is lower than that of OSA formed with natural sands.