A new gel-based material developed by University of Florida chemical engineers filters PFAS "forever chemicals" from water more efficiently than many widely used commercial options.
The advance offers a potential new path to filtering out PFAS, which has been linked to health effects including birth defects and some cancers. Importantly, the new material doesn't itself use fluorine to trap PFAS, helping to reduce fluorinated chemicals in the filtration supply chain.
"One of the big challenges is that these chemicals are present at such low concentrations, so they're very difficult to detect and separate, but they can still impact human health," said Joshua Moon , Ph.D., a professor of chemical engineering at UF who led the new study. "It's like putting a drop of food coloring in an Olympic-sized swimming pool and then trying to get all the food coloring back out. It's not easy."
Moon and his doctoral student Lakshay Dhamania published their findings June 8 in the journal Energy and Environmental Materials. Moon's lab is now working to further test and refine their PFAS-filtering methods for potential application in commercial and municipal water filtration.
In what Moon describes as "molecular Velcro," the new material uses electrical charges designed to trap PFOA, one of the most abundant versions of PFAS in the environment. The gel allows PFOA molecules to bind throughout the material rather than only on its surface, improving its filtration capacity.
The gel can then be used multiple times by flushing out the PFOA with common solvents.
One of the researchers' goals was to identify a way to filter out PFAS without relying on fluorinated materials. If those materials break down, they can potentially release fluorinated compounds back into the environment.
"A lot of the materials out there either don't work well or have to rely on using fluorinated stuff to bind PFAS. We were able to develop these gel-type adsorbents that work well without having PFAS-like substances in the material itself," Moon said.
For Moon, the long-term goal extends beyond a single filtration material.
By building polymers whose chemistry can be adjusted piece by piece, the researchers hope to uncover broader rules for trapping PFAS. That includes compounds that are harder to remove from water than PFOA.
"Maybe we can create new design principles or a better understanding of existing materials to overcome some of the big challenges that commercial treatment processes can't really do," Moon said.
