The National Science Foundation has awarded $225,000 to Clarkson University Civil & Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Yang Yang for his research on a new method to remove per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) from water.
PFAS are a group of chemicals that have been widely used for decades. As additives in numerous consumer products, they have many desirable properties, including exceptional chemical resistance.
However, this property makes it very difficult to remove them from water using current treatment processes. Their chemical stability also makes PFAS persist in the environment, causing significant concerns for human and ecological health. They are found in the blood of people and animals all over the world and have been linked to kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, and low birth weight and immunotoxicity in children.
One promising way to treat PFAS in water into benign end products is electrochemical oxidation. Scientists and engineers have been exploring various strategies to enhance performance, including employing nanotechnology-enabled catalysts. However, expensive metals are often required in this approach, and selective destruction of PFAS in the water that contains various other organic compounds has been challenging.
Yang’s research, titled “ERASE-PFAS: Collaborative Research: Nickel and Palladium Single-Atom Electrocatalysts for Selective Capture and Destruction of PFAS in Complex Water Matrices,” addresses these drawbacks by developing next-generation catalysts that can selectively bind with and destroy PFAS, even when the water contains many other compounds.
Yang and his team will pursue this goal by manipulating metal catalysts to be atomically dispersed, a process known as ‘single-atom catalysis’ (SAC). SAC is the theoretical limit of downsizing materials and represents the state-of-science advancement beyond nanotechnology.
Yang has years of experience in electrocatalysis, water treatment, and PFAS analysis. Joining him on the research team will be Yale Henry P. Becton Sr. Professor and Chair of Chemical & Environmental Engineering Jaehong Kim, an internationally known expert in nanotech-enabled water treatment technology.
Clarkson’s Center for Air and Aquatic Resources Engineering and Sciences (CAARES) Lab is the cornerstone of this project and will provide cutting-edge PFAS analytical instruments and services.
Read more about this research at https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2120452.
