r/science • u/calliope_kekule Professor | Social Science | Science Comm • 2d ago
Chemistry Scientists have found a super-fast way to destroy toxic 'forever chemicals' in water filters. Using a quick burst of electricity, they remove 99.9% of PFAS – and turn the waste into graphene.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-025-00404-z1.5k
u/Circuit_Guy 2d ago
carbon is upcycled into flash graphene, offsetting treatment costs by US$60–100 per kg
That statement is hilarious.
Anyway, that tidbit aside, this has real promise!
It's a given that if you break chemical bonds by heating something to a plasma you end up with the constituent atoms. They're concentrating PFAS in a carbon filter and giving the flourine something to preferentially react with to turn into a stable / natural flouride salt.
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u/alwaysmpe 2d ago
So they killed it with fire? Who knew that'd work...
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u/AffectionateTale3106 2d ago
Water in the fire even
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u/sweaterandsomenikes 1d ago
We’ve known for a long time you can get rid of PFAs with heat. The issue is it’s like 2000 degrees C
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u/Polymathy1 1d ago
The thing about plasma though is that is isn't really carrying much heat at that temperature. Plasma temperature and solid or even gas temperature are different beasts.
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u/Ownuyasha 2d ago
bUt FlOuRiDe WiLL cAlCiFy mY PiNeAl gLaNd
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u/LeadingCheetah2990 2d ago edited 2d ago
Its funny in the UK, a fair few places don't actually add fluorine into the water and you still get people complaining about it (despite living in an area which does not actively add it)
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u/space_keeper 1d ago
I've had this stupid conversation before.
One guy was telling me how he'd just moved to a new house, a bungalow, which meant he didn't have to carry all his shopping and water up the stairs.
Water?!
He'd been buying those giant things of mineral water to avoid tap water, because of this fictitious fluoride. This is in a part of Scotland so famous for pure water that it was considered for semiconductor fabrication plants at one point.
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u/LeadingCheetah2990 1d ago
just wait till he learns about microplastics and how plastic bottle water heightens your exposure.
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u/hawklost 1d ago
You sure it isn't because your water isn't naturally high in Florida?
In the US different areas will add or remove Florida based on the amount that is naturally occurring.
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u/1duck 1d ago
English water it isnt the flourish, but rather the chlorine that I hate. It smells like a swimming pool and it didn't 20+ years ago, I don't know when they started doing it or why but it is foul.
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u/DivideMind 1d ago
It should evaporate if you just let the water sit for a bit (or cook with it, obviously.)
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u/honey_102b 2d ago
let me guess...treatment cost is probably $300/kg. it sounds like the kind of thing that we will have when electricity becomes free.
until then...cool experiment
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u/UwRandom 2d ago
Why are you even in r/science if you're going to make baseless pessimistic assumptions about the costs of this, and then dismiss it based on your assumptions alone? Feel free to share a source if you have one, otherwise this isn't productive.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 2d ago
What proportion of PFAS are PFOA or PFOS?
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u/lorefolk 2d ago
Not much. Best studied but far from the only.
Also, destruction at scale is the hard part. Usually there's a concentration problem also.
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u/Duckel 2d ago
is it likely that most PFAS have a similar fate with this method?
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u/a_trane13 2d ago
I’m not an expert with all these species in particular but I would say probably yes. There’s nothing “special” about the specific type of PFAS used here that makes it extra vulnerable to breaking down from this method.
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u/Polymathy1 1d ago
Yes. The bond strengths and Fluoride substitution into the chains are what makes perfluoro compounds in general "inert" and relatively non reactive. The method should generalize to most PFA compounds, however we might find that some work better with some kind of catalyst.
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u/Skyrmir 1d ago
No need to concentrate it, just hook an electrode to each side of the Pacific and hit it with enough juice.
Just thinking of all the horrible ramifications of electrifying an ocean hard enough to break down all the plastic is kind of a wild science trip of it's own. A power source that large? How would it affect the orbit of the planet when the Pacific vaporizes? So many horrifying questions.
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u/Jabberwoockie 1d ago
Probably more economical to just add this to part of water treatment for municipal water.
Or, if you're on a well and live in an area with a PFOS plume, just run a wire from your breaker to your water line. What's the worst that could happen?
Disclaimer: Don't do that.
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u/VoilaVoilaWashington 1d ago
just run a wire from your breaker to your water line. What's the worst that could happen?
If the breaker does it's job, not much?
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u/ExternalPast7495 19h ago
Alternative idea, place them adjacent to thermal power plants that require cooling water. Has minimal energy losses due to proximity and provides a cleaner process water being discharged. Then if you’ve got HTC plants for waste water, can treat it at the bottom of the catchment too.
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u/Spill_the_Tea 2d ago
Anyone with access to the article know the wattage used? More to understand energy per mass of spent GAC required for scaling this method.
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u/Circuit_Guy 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've done it as a hobby experiment. It's incredibly finicky if your goal is actually making graphene.
The math is going to be really sketchy and nobody can give a good industrial scale answer until we can get the process tuned better.
I have a comment elsewhere kind of poking fun at the graphene part for that reason (that and it won't be expensive if we can dial it in).
Now if your goal is just to make plasma? That's fairly straightforward, I would assume within an order of magnitude of water at 4 kJ/g. Carbon plasma still has plenty of industrial uses. I don't know how much carbon you need to capture a gram of PFAS though.
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u/oliviaplays08 2d ago
So does this work for the PFAS in our bloodstreams?
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u/timmmay11 2d ago
Donate blood to remove PFAS
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u/alucarddrol 2d ago
pfas dialysis machines coming to a botox clinic near you
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u/RedlurkingFir 1d ago
Plasma is also a useful and precious resource that you can donate. Actually donating plasma can be done more frequently and is therefore more efficient in the long run (to extract PFAS)
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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh 1d ago
Doesn't that just give them to someone else?
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u/JohannesdeStrepitu 1d ago
Yes but unless the donor has an unusually high concentration of microplastics chances are that the recipient isn't left any worse off or not much worse off than before they needed blood.
Someone who receives blood with a typical concentration of microplastics after, for example, losing a lot of blood in an injury is only missing an opportunity to lower their concentration of microplastics by replenishing their own blood (as the donor gets to do once they donate some blood). But that's not much of an opportunity if they would die or they otherwise need the blood. Something similar can be said for someone who is getting their blood replaced by donor blood, since they have blood with microplastics getting taken out at the rate they're receiving blood with microplastics (again, it just matters if the donor has an unusually high concentration).
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u/neologismist_ 1d ago
Just don’t chew gum. “Gum base” is plastic and introduces hundreds of thousand of microplastics into your body.
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u/Powder9 2d ago
Donate blood! It’s proven to help reduce pfas in the body. There was an experiment done w firefighters.
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u/RedlurkingFir 1d ago
Donating plasma also works and can be done more frequently, so it's more efficient in the long run.
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u/oliviaplays08 1d ago
Oh I was about to ask about plasma donation, since a place near me will pay you to donate, figure I can detox and then buy other toxins to enjoy
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u/neologismist_ 1d ago
I wonder about plasma, though. Your red blood cells are returned to you. Microplastic too?
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u/RedlurkingFir 1d ago
The article that u/Powder9 mentioned was studying both plasma and whole blood donations. I cited their conclusion (Silver et al. 2021).
Cf microplastics: During plasmapheresis, your blood is centrifugated and only the heaviest elements (hemoglobin) are extracted (diluted in saline) then returned. If the rate of centrifugation of microplastics in blood is low enough, it could possibly work? I don't recall any trial having tested microplastics levels after multiple plasma donations, but if you do find something, I'd be interested. But at the same time, microplastics are mostly contained in tissues rather than blood, so it might not be useful at all.
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u/FernandoMM1220 2d ago
the less you’re exposed to them the lower your bloodstream concentration will be over time
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u/Anastariana 1d ago
Dialysis and replacement of lost plasma with PFAS free saline is probably the only way to do that. A lot of PFAS lurks in the fat in the body so it won't be removed though.
They really did poison everyone on the planet with an incredibly stubborn toxin. Take a bow, Dupont.
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u/SerendipityJays 1d ago
Pregnancy and breastfeeding also offload PFAS through placenta/mammary gland, but no one is delighted about growing baby humans with preloaded plastics :/
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u/Zealousideal_Let_975 1d ago
I mean as much as being struck by an electrical storm could, if that. The process utilizes lethal voltages.
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u/Onlymediumsteak 2d ago
As far as I know there is already commercially available tech, for example BioLargo
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u/Zwitterioni 2d ago
That's just the concentration/filtration of the PFAS. This is novel due to the destruction of them
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u/DDR-Dame 1d ago
Can someone ELI5 what the graphene would be then used for? I assume that's better and more useful than microplastics...
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u/jethro401 1d ago
I don't want to drink graphene though? And if all the chemicals turn to graphene the amount would be kinda bad to be drinking and bathing in right? I'm actually asking i literally don't know I'm an idiot.
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u/nokeyblue 2d ago
Sounds like a bad day for the fishies.
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u/Saphira9 1d ago
They'd need to collect some water, screen out anything alive, separate out from the river, zap it, cool it, then return it.
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