High-efficient and eco-friendly technology for the elimination of permanent organic pollutants in filtration systems

The UK is part of the Stockholm Convention targeting the removal of persistent organic pollutants (POPs); PFAS and PFOS (poly-fluorinated materials) frequently found in groundwaters and rivers are considered POP chemicals. Companies need to find effective ways to clean both regular water and wastewater from these chemicals by 2030\.

Speral Sinfin is a company developing new plasma technology to address within others, water contamination problems. Water is becoming a limited resource and the level of treatment that water requires is increasing every day. The growing presence of Persistent Contaminants is putting a lot of stress on water companies to assure the quality of the water delivered to customers, as well as inflating the cost associated with these treatments.

Furthermore, the elimination of grey waters is getting much attention, as the changes in rain cycles are creating temporal high levels of POP.

Currently, when eliminating POPs from water, commonly using filtration systems leads the filters to accumulate a highly \[toxic\] concentration of POPs. After the filtration is completed, the filters need to be removed and burnt, which causes a release of a high level of toxic by-products like fluor-based gases into the air (so a system to neutralise these is required); unfortunately, the option of removal and neutralisation by filters is a complex and expensive task. Not many cost-effective alternatives are available today.

We propose to eliminate POPs on filtration systems before the filters are removed from the plant. Our proposed plasma treatment is "a chemical treatment, but chemicals free", with no chemicals other than water left behind; plasma-activated water (PAW) means water molecules oxidize the organic material and decompose it returning water to regular, clean condition after a small period of time.

PAW can effectively destroy organic material e.g. "eternal chemicals" such as PFOS/PFAS or POP. This technology has some very important benefits: the plasma treatment (directly or PAW) is equivalent to a strong chemical oxidative treatment, but with the advantage that all species are formed locally (no chemicals transportation or manipulation is necessary) and all "chemicals" created by the plasma in water, are short-lived, which means that there is no chemical residue caused by this treatment.

All the created waste would be innocuous chemicals (as per scientific publications). This will have an enormous impact in terms of how clean the water treatment can be.