date of issue:
Monday, February 20, 2023
Yang Yang, Clarkson Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently published an article in Environmental Science and Technology Letters discussing the development of robust PFAS destruction technology.
Yang's research team has developed a revolutionary mechanocatalytic technology that degrades PFAS and PFAS chemicals in soil at ambient temperature and pressure.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAS) are synthetic chemicals that have been developed and used in many consumer products and industries since the 1940s. PFAS are among the most persistent chemicals ever created. The growing discovery of PFAS in various environmental media over the past two decades has raised concerns about stability, persistence, and side effects, including toxicity to living organisms and humans.
The project team showed that when PFAS is mixed with boron nitride, a reference piezoelectric material, it can be converted to fluoride as one of the final products in the absence of PFAS when steel balls collide in a ball mill. Solving. And without heat and overload. This strategy is very effective at eliminating pure PFAS chemicals and has been used successfully to remediate PFAS-contaminated sediments.
The article was published in a recent issue of Environmental Science and Engineering Letters, the leading journal of environmental engineering. It was also on the cover of the magazine and has been downloaded over 1,000 times online as of January 2023. org, AAAS and other major media outlets under the heading "Be Good Forever." Eliminating PFAS by grinding with a new additive.
This article was co-authored by Nanyan Yang, a graduate student in civil and environmental technology, and Shasha Yang, a graduate student in the Clarkson Institute of Sustainable Environmental Engineering. Undergraduate students Claudia Beltran and Madison Mursi contributed significantly to the study. Analytical support for PFAS was provided by Dr Sujan Fernando, Professor Thomas Holsen and the CAARES team. A provisional patent was filed with support from the Shipley Center.