A recent collaboration between scientists at UC Riverside (UCR) and Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. has resulted in the development of a novel method to clean up PFAS contamination. PFAS or poly- and per-fluoroalkyl substances are persistent pollutants that have led to groundwater contamination in numerous municipal water supplies throughout the country.
One source of this contamination is fire-suppression foams used throughout the military and commercial aviation industry. These foams contain hundreds of PFAS and have been in use throughout the aviation industry for decades. Because of the increased risk of cancer and other diseases as a result of PFAS contamination, the EPA recently imposed new regulations setting limits on PFAS concentrations of 4ppt for certain PFAS compounds.
The remediation method, published in Nature Water, utilizes ultra-violet (UV) light, sulfite, and oxidation to break down PFAS pollutants in water at room temperature and ambient pressures.
"In this work, we continued our research on the UV-based treatment, but this time, we had a collaboration with an electrochemical oxidation expert at Clarkson University," said UCR associate professor Jinyong Liu. "We put these two steps together and we achieved near-complete destruction of PFAS in various water samples contaminated by the foams."
The team believes the method is well suited to clean up heavily contaminated equipment used for various aviation-related tasks including firefighting. The method could also be used to treat leftover containers of PFAS containing firefighting foams at these locations.
Additionally, the team believes the method could assist local water utilities with groundwater contamination by assisting with the regeneration of beads used in ion exchange technologies currently used to remedy the contaminated water. "We want to have sustainable management of the resin," Liu said. "We want to reuse it."