With Kentucky lawmakers taking a closer look at reducing microplastic contamination, Dr. Jian Shi with UK's College of Agriculture says there's a promising line of research underway that relies on what he calls a "green solvent."
"The team here we are looking into what we call a green solvent, which is a process we take the naturally derived chemicals not from petro-based chemicals but from naturally derived chemicals from plants and we use those solvents liquid to remove the particle from the water due to their high affinity with the plastics," he said.
Researchers are testing various plants including those native to Kentucky to see which might work best to create the solvent.
The goal she says is to remove both larger microplastics and smaller varieties known as nanoplastics.
So far the research has shown the green solvent technique can remove up to 95 percent of polystyrene particles and PET particles, which come from one of the most common packaging plastics used for bottles and food containers.
Researchers are also working on scaling the project up so it can go from the lab to a larger real world operation.