GeBeMA+ - Development of an overall method for the determination of micro-plastics in wastewater – supplementary project

The GeBeMA+ project is essentially a supplementary project to the project “Development of a comprehensive method for determining microplastics in wastewater (GeBeMA)”, which was funded by the BMLUK and ran from January 2023 to August 2025. GeBeMA aimed to develop a comprehen-sive method for determining microplastics in wastewater from wastewater treatment plants. A comprehensive method means that a continuous method was to be developed and validated, from the extraction of representative solid samples from the wastewater to sample preparation and analysis. The comprehensive method was to be practical, cost-effective, and suitable for the routine determination of microplastic in wastewater at sewage treatment plants. The sub-goals of the project were to compare two microplastic analysis methods (EA-OEM, TED-GC/MS), to apply the comprehensive method to the inflow and outflow of a wastewater treatment plant in a combined sewer system, and to carry out measurements over longer periods of time in order to investigate the temporal variance of microplastic in wastewater at wastewater treatment plants. In GeBeMA, individual questions and problems arose for which no satisfactory answers or solutions could yet be found. These will be further addressed in GeBeMA+ in several working packages.