UNC Charlotte research hopes to use algae to remove microplastics from water

CHARLOTTE — Researchers have been finding microplastics that are nearly impossible to see in almost every water source across the country.

Microplastics, typically from clothing fibers, degraded tires, or other broken-down plastic material, have found their way into wastewater systems, the environment, and drinking water sources.

Jordan Landis, a Ph.D. candidate in environmental engineering, said the traces she’s found in the Charlotte area have been particularly small, but still concerning as scientists are still working out potential health and environmental risks that come with these now ubiquitous pollutants.

“It became sort of an issue of how do they get there and how can we sort of combat the issue?” she said.

In a partnership with Charlotte Water, researchers with UNC Charlotte have been studying the presence of microplastics in city wastewater. As a co-op intern, Landis has been working directly with Muriel Steele, the head of research at Charlotte Water, to add to their body of work.

“It’s really something that’s hard to measure in wastewater so that’s part of the research that we’re doing,” Steele said.

Landis is also looking to take that work a step further by finding a way to get rid of microplastics altogether, using a material most wastewater treatment plants consider an unwanted intruder: algae.

Landis’s specific strand of algae is bioengineered algae that can grow in wastewater.

“While it’s photosynthesizing, it will produce an enzyme that’ll attack the plastics and break it down,” she said.

Her research won an innovation award from the American Society of Engineers last fall when she was an undergraduate at UNC Charlotte. She spent the spring and summer testing the algae in wastewater samples from Charlotte Water to determine how it might be safely introduced and removed from wastewater treatment systems.

“You know you’ve done this in like a clean, sanitary lab setting, but can you put it into wastewater?” Landis said.

Now as pursues a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, she plans to continue this research as a part of her thesis. She plans to continue her partnership with Charlotte Water and if she secures funding, she hopes to start a pilot program in Charlotte using the algae at the wastewater treatment center to see if the results can be replicated in treatment plants across the country.

“This isn’t just in Charlotte this is everywhere,” she said. “Plastics are made by us and wastewater treatment plants are just kind of the collectors of it.”

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