Filtration Examination of Biofilter Made of Banana Trunk Waste Due to Mitigate Microplastics Emission from Laundry Waste Water

Most of particles contained in waste water laundry are microplastics since more than 80% of our cloths now days are made of synthetic fibers. Many reports about the danger of microplastics are provided in various journal. This research aims to find out effectivity of biofilter resulted from banana trunk and performance of filtration tool. The method used in this research include: 1. Characterization and filtration of microplastic PE (polyethylene) and waste water laundry, 2. filtration test PE, biofilter and waste water laundry, 3. construction and examination of filtration tool. Result of this research showed that microplastic PE is identified by CH2 group with wave length 1463 cm-1 and the shave unorderly spherical and the size is 13 mm. Biofilter able to filtrate microplastics reference and microplastics from waste water laundry since there is no CH2 group at wave length 1400s cm-1 . However, capability of biofilter to filtrate microplastics is on size ≥ 13 mm which is showed by the SEM. At the meanwhile, EDS result states that Whatmann filter paper is better in filtration than biofilter itself. Filtration tool is able to reduce microplastics content which is showed by reducing of intensity of CH2 from 1449 cm-1 to 1402 cm-1 .