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Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles

[Image: see text] Microplastic (mP) pollution has been indicated as an area of concern in the marine environment. However, there is no consensus on their potential to cause significant ecological harm, and a comprehensive risk assessment of mP pollution is unattainable due to gaps in our understandi...

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Autores principales: Coyle, Róisín, Service, Matthew, Witte, Ursula, Hardiman, Gary, McKinley, Jennifer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Chemical Society 2023
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10111405/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37090119
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.2c00466
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author Coyle, Róisín
Service, Matthew
Witte, Ursula
Hardiman, Gary
McKinley, Jennifer
author_facet Coyle, Róisín
Service, Matthew
Witte, Ursula
Hardiman, Gary
McKinley, Jennifer
author_sort Coyle, Róisín
collection PubMed
description [Image: see text] Microplastic (mP) pollution has been indicated as an area of concern in the marine environment. However, there is no consensus on their potential to cause significant ecological harm, and a comprehensive risk assessment of mP pollution is unattainable due to gaps in our understanding of their transport, uptake, and exchange processes. This research considers drag models that have been proposed to calculate the terminal settling velocity of regularly and irregularly shaped particles to assess their applicability in a mP modeling context. The evaluation indicates three models that predict the settling velocity of mPs to a high precision and suggests that an explicit model is the most appropriate for implementation in a mP transport model. This research demonstrates that the mP settling velocity does not vary significantly over time and depth relevant to the scale of an ocean model and that the terminal settling velocity is independent of the initial particle velocity. These findings contribute toward efforts to simulate the vertical transport of mPs in the ocean, which will improve our understanding of the residence time of mPs in the water column and subsequently their availability for uptake into the marine ecosystem.
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spelling pubmed-101114052023-04-19 Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles Coyle, Róisín Service, Matthew Witte, Ursula Hardiman, Gary McKinley, Jennifer ACS ES T Water [Image: see text] Microplastic (mP) pollution has been indicated as an area of concern in the marine environment. However, there is no consensus on their potential to cause significant ecological harm, and a comprehensive risk assessment of mP pollution is unattainable due to gaps in our understanding of their transport, uptake, and exchange processes. This research considers drag models that have been proposed to calculate the terminal settling velocity of regularly and irregularly shaped particles to assess their applicability in a mP modeling context. The evaluation indicates three models that predict the settling velocity of mPs to a high precision and suggests that an explicit model is the most appropriate for implementation in a mP transport model. This research demonstrates that the mP settling velocity does not vary significantly over time and depth relevant to the scale of an ocean model and that the terminal settling velocity is independent of the initial particle velocity. These findings contribute toward efforts to simulate the vertical transport of mPs in the ocean, which will improve our understanding of the residence time of mPs in the water column and subsequently their availability for uptake into the marine ecosystem. American Chemical Society 2023-03-22 /pmc/articles/PMC10111405/ /pubmed/37090119 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.2c00466 Text en © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Permits the broadest form of re-use including for commercial purposes, provided that author attribution and integrity are maintained (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Coyle, Róisín
Service, Matthew
Witte, Ursula
Hardiman, Gary
McKinley, Jennifer
Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title_full Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title_fullStr Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title_full_unstemmed Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title_short Modeling Microplastic Transport in the Marine Environment: Testing Empirical Models of Particle Terminal Sinking Velocity for Irregularly Shaped Particles
title_sort modeling microplastic transport in the marine environment: testing empirical models of particle terminal sinking velocity for irregularly shaped particles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10111405/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37090119
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.2c00466
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