ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

The aging behavior of microplastics manufactured from diverse polymers is predicted by the Johnsen index with regularized PLS

Tahir Mehmood, Muhammad Tahir, and Chen Zhi

School of Natural Sciences (SNS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan

E-mail: tahime@gmail.com

Received: 22 October 2021  Accepted: 18 February 2022

Abstract:

The analysis of microplastics in natural and experimental materials is becoming more common. They have the ability to transmit harmful substances and have consequently been identified as a severe worldwide environmental concern in recent decades. To evaluate the aging characteristics of polypropylene (PP), microplastics like (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PETE or PET), carbonyl and hydroxyl indices are utilized. The current work uses a johnsen index in regularized elimination in partial least squares (PLS) to predict carbonyl and hydroxyl indices for PE, PP, PVC, and PET polymer types. The suggested approach employs current filter metrics. For predicting FTIR-based data, the proposed Johnsen index-based PLS model beats the previous model for predicting carbonyl and hydroxyl indices. In addition, the suggested technique identifies wave numbers that are influential across functional molecules. Most of the models share the functional compounds \(CH_3, CH_2, CH, =C-H\) and \(=CH_2\).

Keywords: Carbonyl index; Hydroxyl index; Microplastics; FTIR; PLS

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-022-02141-z

Chemical Papers 76 (7) 4041–4047 (2022)