New Water Filter May Trap Tough Chemicals

Scientists built a new water filter. The filter was made to catch PFAS. PFAS are man-made chemicals. They stay in the ground and water. They may hurt people. New rules and safety worries are raising the need for cleanups. The health effects are a concern. The rules are coming.

The team changed how they made the filter. They used a redox start. It worked at room temperature. This method could fit a thick liquid blend. That made scaling easier. The team could make columns bigger. That step was seen as a plus.

The new filter had a mixed pore shape. It had two main pore sizes. The earlier filter had one main pore size. The new filter had a bigger key pore. The material and batch results were the same. The team made a version 36 times larger. The size change was large.

The new filter did better in flow tests. It delayed breakthrough. That was for a short chain PFAS. The team then used larger columns. They used three sizes. The performance stayed steady. The bigger columns kept working well. Some old tools had limits. Particle types can slow flow. That can hurt large scale use. The new design tries to fix this.