Nowadays, life without plastics is unimaginable. Although our daily lives still rely heavily on different types of plastic products, awareness of their negative impact has led to some crucial changes in their production and use. In the last decade, more attention was given to the smaller plastic particles that are usually invisible to the naked eye. Microplastics, for example, are defined as small plastic particles in a range between 1 and 1000 µm and are now the subject of many different studies. Microplastics have attracted a lot of attention because they are found in all ecosystems, and especially because of their unknown, potentially hazardous characteristics. As a result, the number of research papers focusing on microplastic pollution and looking for possible solutions is increasing significantly. Huge amounts of microplastics can be found in various water bodies, entering together with wastewaters. Conventional biological wastewater treatment plants are usually used for wastewater treatment, but they cannot be always utilized. Constructed wetlands are one of the most promising alternatives, as they are engineered systems that mimic natural processes. Microplastics removal with the help of constructed wetlands is still quite new and poorly understood, but a perspective possibility. Therefore, in the master’s thesis, we focused on researching the efficiency of a surface flow constructed wetland for the removal of microplastics. In our research, we investigated the possibility of microplastics removal from synthetic wastewater with two parallel experiments. The first was performed in the presence of different aquatic plants and second without them. Based on the results, constructed wetlands are efficient for microplastics removal, and presence of aquatic plants had a major impact on removal efficiency. Various biochemical parameters (chlorophyll a, protein, carbohydrates contents and electron transport system activity) were determined to assess the impact of microplastics on plants in laboratory constructed wetland, but no significant impact was found. Although, we concluded that constructed wetlands can efficiently remove microplastics from wastewater, future research should focus on testing different parameters of constructed wetlands and investigating the impact of microplastics on plants, especially after long-term exposure.
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