Research Project
9679047
PROJECT SUMMARY There is an ever-growing need for useable uncontaminated water in the United States and across the globe. This increasing need includes many uses with the most significant being for potable water. However, a significant problem is occurring at the confluence of industry and consumer that continues to put access to clean drinkable water at risk; industries, including oil, manufacturing, agricultural, aerospace, & food, utilize toxic chemicals in their industrial processes which can eventually spill or leak into human water supplies, contaminating the source. Some of the numerous potentially hazardous chemicals that have been identified in water sources are 1,3-butadiene, pentachlorophenol (PCP), trichloroethylene (TCE), perfluorooctane sulfonamide (PFOSA), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), and many others. Concerns regarding these and other chemicals have led the environmental protection agency (EPA), as well as individual states, to put advisory health level limits on sources of drinking water. In particular, the current lifetime health advisory level for the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), PFOS and PFOA, is 70 ppt (0.070 µg/L) due to their persistence in the human body as well as their ubiquitous environmental presence. Furthermore, a Harvard study has found that the water supplies for 6 million people in the United States exceed the recommended safe levels of PFASs including PFOS and PFOA. There is an obvious significance of removing toxic chemicals and decreasing the risk of disease from 6 million people?s water supply; however, the widespread implementation of a remediation system is often hindered due to a high cost- to-benefit ratio and limited range of effectiveness. Lynntech, Inc., in collaboration with the Seneca Companies, has designed a system that will overcome the drawbacks of current sorption- and filtration-based remediation systems which include 1) exorbitant filtration/sorbent replacement times and costs, 2) low selectivity to either PFOS or PFOA or similar potentially hazardous PFAS, 3) additional costs associated with the decomposition/disposal of concentrated or captured waste, and 4) low flux & high fouling rates. Lynntech plans to overcome these current limitations by proposing a tunable and continuous remediation system that will utilize a scalable, efficient, and plasma-induced contaminate decomposition, sorbent regeneration system with an integrated monitoring system. This complete remediation system is capable of achieving in-situ and ex-situ groundwater purification from a variety of contaminates with less than 70 ppt of PFOA/PFOS in the purified effluent while offering the following advantages over current systems: extension in useable lifetime, reduction in lifetime cost, high purification rate, ability to function without the need for a secondary contaminate disposal step, and adaptability to a large range of contaminates.
