1. IMPACT: Innovative (nano)Materials and processes for advanced catalytic technologies to degrade PFOA in water.
- Author
-
Osonga FJ, Eshun GB, Xue H, Kurilla S, Al Hassan MT, Qamar A, Chen H, Boufadel M, and Sadik OA
- Abstract
We hereby report the development of a novel electrochemical method to degrade perfluorooctanoic acid (C
7 F15 COOH, PFOA). At the center of the approach are bimetallic Pd-Ru nano-catalyst materials called IMPACT: Innovative (nano)Materials and Processes for Advanced Catalytic Technologies. IMPACT uses flavonoid-sequestered Pd-Ru, allowing the development of specialized electrodes with tunable properties to sequentially degrade PFOA in wastewater samples into a sustainable byproduct via an indirect electrochemical method. Electron transfers at RuOx Hy species stabilize the Pd component of the nano-catalysts, enabling the degradation process via PFOA deprotonation, chain shortening, decarboxylation, hydrolysis, fluoride elimination, and CF2 flake-off mechanism. IMPACT enabled the observation of redox peaks at -0.26 V and 0.56 V for the first time, with accompanying reduction peaks at -0.5V and 0.29 V, respectively. These redox peaks, which correlated with the concentrations of PFOA (20, 50, 100, 200, and 400. mg L-1 ), were verified and confirmed using electrochemical simulations. Control experiments did not show degradation of PFOA in the absence of Pd-Ru nano-catalyst. The degradation in wastewater was obtained within 3 h with an efficiency of 98.5%. The electrochemical degradation products of PFOA were identified using High-resolution desalting paper spray mass spectrometry (DPS-MS) and collision-induced dissociation (CID) analysis. The results yielded C2 F5 COOH, C3 F7 COOH, and C6 F13 OH with dissociation losses of CF2 O or CO2 . IMPACT introduces a novel nano-catalyst with high efficiency and a reliable capability that defluorinates strong C-F bonds that are components of recalcitrant organics in myriad environmental matrices., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF