DOMANI - CNR-ISSMC

Dynamic Observation and Machine learning-assisted profiling for fast Assessment of submicroplastics and Native ecocorona In exposure media

Principal Investigator: Simona Ortelli
Involved Personnel: Anna Luisa Costa
Starting date: 30/11/2023
Duration: 24 months
Total Funding: 239 690,00 €
Call: PIANO NAZIONALE DI RIPRESA E RESILIENZA (PNRR) Missione 4 “Istruzione e Ricerca” – Componente C2 Investimento 1.1, “Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN)” PRIN 2022 PNRR – D.D. 1409 del 14/09/2022
CNR-ISSMC Role: Partner
Project Coordinator: Valentina Marassi (Università degli Studi di Bologna), Simona Ortelli (co-PI)
Consortium: Università degli Studi di Bologna (Valentina Marassi), INRIM (Alessio Sacco), CNR-ISSMC

DOMANI aims at establishing a pragmatic, result-oriented and rigorous approach to achieve two orthogonal objectives.

1) The first is the comprehension of sub-micro plastics (SMP) eco-coronas through profiling, fractionation and quali-quantitative characterization of SMP in the exposure media.
2) The second and most ambitious is the design of modelling approaches to dynamically profile and recognize clean and polluted water/food matrices in fast-result/fast-action mode, creating screening tools based on simpler analyses before resorting to time, money and environment-heavy ones.

DOMANI puts together interdisciplinary expertise to devise matrix-oriented strategies, exploiting analytical, surface and colloidal chemistry and metrology, and benefiting of chemometrics, multiblock analysis and Machine Learning.
Rooted in the synergy with EU projects PlasticsFate and PlasticTrace, and stemming from Italian excellence in research (Academia-UniBO, the National Research Council-ISSMC, and the National Institute of Metrology-INRIM), the involved Units will jointly collaborate to create knowledge and tools for SMP and eco-corona study.
As such, DOMANI aims to contribute to the EU Plastics Strategy goal to reduce the impact of SMP on the environment.

Properties of sub-micro plastics (SMP) and relative techniques for their determination.

Results achieved

The DOMANI project achieved its planned objectives by developing interdisciplinary strategies for the characterization of micro- and nanoplastics (SMP) in environmental and food matrices and for understanding the formation of eco-coronas on particle surfaces. The project integrated expertise in analytical chemistry, surface and colloidal chemistry, metrology, chemometrics, multiblock analysis, and Machine Learning.
The activities focused on the development and harmonization of static and dynamic methods for SMP characterization, the assessment of their behaviour in environmental and food matrices, and the integration of data obtained using different analytical techniques.

Main results

Reference materials based on polystyrene (PS), as well as secondary nanoplastics of PET, PE, and PP, were selected and characterized, with sizes ranging approximately from 70 nm to 1.5 µm.
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was developed and harmonized for the static characterization of aqueous SMP dispersions using FESEM, DLS, and ELS.
Dynamic methodologies based on Field-Flow Fractionation (FFF) and complementary detection techniques, including pyrolysis-GC-MS, were developed and evaluated.
The behaviour of SMP in environmental matrices, including simulated seawater, and in food matrices such as milk and pollen was investigated.
The formation of eco-coronas was investigated through the interaction of SMP with biomolecules and matrix components, including bovine serum albumin (BSA) and pollen components.
The comparison of characterization techniques highlighted, for milk, the advantages of Centrifugal Liquid Sedimentation (CLS) over DLS for the identification of the size distribution of nanoplastics.
Multivariate analysis and Machine Learning strategies were developed to integrate data obtained from different techniques and to distinguish clean matrices from plastic-containing matrices.
A shared database was created to collect and harmonize the experimental data produced by the three research units.

Publications

The results of the project led to the publication of two international scientific papers:

A. Placci, M. Fadda, I. Coralli, J. Wang, A. Zattoni, A. Costa, R. Portela, A.M. Giovannozzi, D. Fabbri, D. Melucci, S. Giordani, B. Roda, P. Reschiglian, S. Ortelli, A. Sacco and V. Marassi, Multitechnique Characterization of Eco-Corona Formation on Airborne Nanoplastics, RSC Advances, 2025, 15, 30849.
S. Giordani, M. J. Huber, I. S. Jüngling, A. Zattoni, B. Roda, P. Reschiglian, V. Marassi, N. P. Ivleva, Online Coupling of Field-Flow Fractionation with Raman Microspectroscopy Enables the Advanced Study of Nanoplastics Directly in Food, Analytical Chemistry, 2026, 98(1), 488–496.

Articles in preparation

– Publication on the milk matrix and the identification of plastics using multidetection and online Raman spectroscopy.
– Publication on the formation of plastics and eco-coronas in the pollen matrix.
– Manuscript on an interlaboratory study of standard plastics in controlled media.
– Study on SERS of SMP and sample matrices and on new characterization strategies using innovative techniques.
– Further manuscripts on the colloidal characterization of SMP in milk and on the interlaboratory study of plastics in relevant matrices.

Future perspectives

The results obtained provide a methodological basis for the characterization of micro- and nanoplastics in complex environmental and food matrices. The integration of static, semi-dynamic, and dynamic techniques, together with multivariate analysis and Machine Learning, has demonstrated the potential of profiling strategies for the identification of nanoplastics and for the assessment of surface modifications associated with their interaction with exposure matrices.