3.2. Pre-treatment wastewater filter imaging
As existing systems are not designed to remove nanoparticles, the lack of identifiable statistical trends in particle sizes raises the question of whether existing systems actually filter nanoparticles at all. In order to determine whether nanoparticles would be incidentally captured on filter material, we examined pre-treatment filters using ESEM. The
analysis was intended only to confirm the presence or absence of absorbed nanoparticles and not to count themor assess general capture efficiency. It was observed that nearly all fiber surfaces were covered with multiple layers of nanoparticles (see Fig. 6). These nanoparticles were characterized being between 50 nm and 100 nm in size and
near-spherical. Further investigation is required to demonstrate the relationship between these particles and those in thewastewater, as well as to determine if there is a size-dependent functionality in the capture of particles.