Breaking apart "forever chemicals" has challenged scientists for years because the compounds are built around some of the strongest bonds in chemistry. Now, a research team in Germany has used two different water-treatment methods that are showing promise in early tests.
What's happening?
According to SciTechDaily, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf tested hydrodynamic cavitation and gas-dispersed cold atmospheric plasma as potential PFAS-destruction methods.
Experts at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research found that both approaches broke down the chemicals and produced fluoride, a sign that the compounds were being split apart.
SciTechDaily reported that postdoctoral researcher Dr. Ysabel Huaccallo-Aguilar and colleagues examined a process called hydrodynamic cavitation, which forces PFAS-contaminated water through a narrow opening to generate tiny vapor bubbles.
"In hydrodynamic cavitation, we pass PFAS-enriched water through a constriction, generating small vapor bubbles," explained Dr. Sebastian Reinecke, head of the Department of Water and Environmental Technologies at HZDR, per SciTechDaily.
In the team's experiments, the method degraded about 37% of dissolved PFOS, one of the most studied PFAS compounds.
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A second study examined plasma treatment led by environmental engineer Dr. Amit Kumar. That approach nearly completely degraded both short- and long-chain PFAS and converted about 35% of the fluorine in the compounds into fluoride salts, though it required far more energy.
Why does it matter?
PFAS refers to a group of more than 10,000 industrial chemicals used across many products and processes. PFAS, often referred to as "forever chemicals," have faced widespread scrutiny as some are suspected of harming genetic material and increasing cancer risk, while the effects of many others are still not well understood.
PFAS can flow from wastewater into rivers, lakes, and oceans, where they may linger for long periods. As SciTechDaily noted, researchers have found elevated concentrations in the Elbe River.
Keeping this pollution from spreading is one challenge, but destroying PFAS outright is even more difficult. Treatment systems capable of cutting through those durable chemical bonds could become an important way to reduce contamination.
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The work was conducted as part of Germany's National Water Strategy, which focuses on protecting water resources and safeguarding drinking water supplies. If these methods can be scaled up, they may help reduce one of the most difficult classes of water pollutants to remove.
What's being done?
According to SciTechDaily, the researchers are already working on improvements to the two methods.
"Our goal is to improve the process to a degradation rate of more than 80% of the PFAS in the solution and mineralizing more than 50 percent of the fluorine that is bound in the chemicals," Reinecke said, per SciTechDaily.
At the same time, the plasma setup is being adapted to handle much larger amounts of water. The team is increasing the reaction volume from about 50 milliliters to five liters using several electrodes and a technical gas injector.
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