Small Microplastic Sampling in Water: Development of an Encapsulated Filtration Device

A variety of microplastic sampling instrumentation is currently used for water pollution studies. Plankton net-based approaches have been the most adopted techniques for water column and surface sampling. When applied to microplastics (MP) in the lower µm size range these methods, however, introduce non-negligible risks of sample contamination and loss due to instrument and procedure design. Based on the first principles of systems engineering design we have developed a mobile sampling platform for field application that fulfils the needs of producing usable MP samples with a lower size limit of 10 µm using an encapsulated flow-through filtration concept. Here, we explain the requirements, development, and construction of the device for others to replicate and improve.