1. Removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using super-fine powder activated carbon and ceramic membrane filtration
- Author
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Christopher P. Higgins, Tayler Hedtke, Conner C. Murray, Anastasia Nickerson, Carrie A. McDonough, Tzahi Y. Cath, Hooman Vatankhah, and Christopher Bellona
- Subjects
Powdered activated carbon treatment ,Environmental Engineering ,Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis ,Microfiltration ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,chemistry.chemical_element ,02 engineering and technology ,010501 environmental sciences ,01 natural sciences ,law.invention ,Adsorption ,law ,medicine ,Environmental Chemistry ,Waste Management and Disposal ,Filtration ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,021110 strategic, defence & security studies ,Pollution ,Ceramic membrane ,chemistry ,Environmental chemistry ,Sewage treatment ,Carbon ,Activated carbon ,medicine.drug - Abstract
Contamination of drinking water sources with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) is a major challenge for environmental engineers. While granular activated carbon (GAC) is an effective adsorbent-based treatment technology for long-chained PFASs, GAC is less effective for removal of short-chained compounds, necessitating a more complete treatment strategy. Super-fine powder activated carbon (SPAC; particle diameter1 um) is potentially a superior adsorbent to GAC due to high specific surface area and faster adsorption kinetics. This study served to evaluate SPAC coupled with ceramic microfiltration (CMF) for PFAS removal in a continuous flow system. Comparison of PFAS mass loading rates onto SPAC and GAC to 10% breakthrough of PFASs using contaminated groundwater indicates that SPAC has nearly double the adsorption potential of GAC. Limitations reaching breakthrough for the SPAC system led to additional higher mass loading experiments where PFAS adsorption onto SPAC reached 2990 μg/g (for quantifiable PFASs), 480x greater than GAC and is thought to be a function of adsorbent size, pore content and PFAS chain length. Additional analysis of system performance through the application of liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QToF-MS) revealed the presence of additional PFASs in influent samples that were removed by the SPAC/CMF system.
- Published
- 2018