Principal Investigator
Collaborators
Dr. Prado Domercq, Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr. Antonia Praetorius, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dr. Sam Harrison, Lancaster Environment Centre, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Bernd Nowack, Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland
Prof. Mark Wiesner, Duke University, United States of America
Description
The project will deliver a new version of UTOPIA that will integrate state-of-the-science knowledge about the behavior of microplastic in the environment and support calculation of exposure metrics and representative concentrations of microplastic to support risk assessment.
UTOPIA is a unit-world multimedia mass-balance model for microplastic that was developed in the LRI ECO56 project by Prado Domercq and Matthew MacLeod at Stockholm University, in collaboration with Antonia Praetorius (UvA) and Sam Harrison (UKCEH). UTOPIA quantitatively models microplastic in five size classes and four aggregation states within a unit world model environment consisting of 17 discrete compartments. Physical, chemical and aggregation state-changing processes are modeled as (pseudo)-first order rate constants that are assembled into a system of 340 (= 5 x 4 x 17) simultaneous mass-balance equations and solved to deduce mass inventories, mass concentration and particle number concentration of microplastic in each size class, aggregation state and compartment
