Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large group of anthropogenic compounds with unique properties, including chemical inertness, resistance to many degradation processes and amphiphilic structure. This makes them useful in a range of applications, but also very persistent and bioaccumulative in nature, where PFAS have been linked to adverse health effects in both animals and humans. There are regulations for PFAS, including the REACH regulation and Stockholm Convention, but for now PFAS are monitored individually. This poses a problem since many regulated, long-chain PFAS today are being replaced with unregulated, short-chain homologues with similar hazardous properties.For water remediation of PFAS, a popular and effective sorption technique for their removal is activated carbon (AC), with its close to 100% sorption efficiency. This study focuses on the efficiency of more sustainable materials like bark, steel slag and biochar to sorb eleven different PFAS (PFAS-11) from contaminated water. In this work, contaminated water passed through different constellations of sorbent materials by flow-through experiments, underwent solid-phase extraction (SPE) using a weak anion-exchange (WAX) adsorbent for sample clean-up, and was lastly prepared for analysis using an ultra-performance liquid chromatograph (UPLC) coupled to a quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer (MS/MS).For the different sorbent constellations tested, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) was removed to the highest degree, with an average removal of 70%. When studying the sum of PFAS-11 between the tested sorption constellations, the bark tests sorbed around 20%, the steel slag combinations sorbed between 30-40% and biochar sorbed 43% of the initial PFAS-11 concentration (1 750 ng/L) in the contaminated water. None of these materials achieved an efficient enough sorption to go below the Swedish PFAS-11 drinking water limit value of 90 ng/L, so the results are for the time being suggested more as complementary, low-cost sorption techniques. Further research is recommended to extensively be able to implement more sustainable sorbents with higher sorbing efficiencies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-99878 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Storm, Natalie |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för naturvetenskap och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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