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.”
Read more about New Technique Filters PFAS Forever Chemicals Using “Molecular Velcro”.
