CAREER: 3D Printed Carbon-Metal Nanohybrid Aerogels for Highly Efficient Adsorptive/Catalytic Removal of PFASs

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are fluorinated organic chemicals that have been manufactured and used in numerous consumer products and industrial applications since the 1940s. During the last two decades, increasing detection of PFAS in surface water, groundwater, soils, sludges, and biosolids has raised significant concerns about their persistence, stability, and adverse impact in the environment including toxicity to living organisms and humans.

Conventional water treatment technologies cannot effectively remove and destroy PFAS due to their dilute concentration in contaminated water sources and unique chemical features, including a combination of strong C-F bonds, hydrophobic carbon tails, and hydrophilic terminal head groups. The overarching goal of this CAREER project is to lay the foundation for the development of a novel and integrated filtration/catalytic reactor system that can extract and destroy PFAS from contaminated water sources.

To advance this goal, the Principal Investigator proposes to use 3D printing to explore the fabrication of adsorptive/catalytic graphene-metal nanohybrid aerogels with high surface area, tunable surface chemistry, and hierarchical and interconnected pores for fast water/mass transport to enable efficient extraction and degradation of PFAS from contaminated water sources. The successful completion of this project will benefit society through the development of new functional materials and fundamental knowledge to advance the development of an integrated filtration and catalytic system that could serve a point-of-use (POU) filter for the treatment of PFAS contaminated water.

Further benefits to society will be achieved through student education and training including the mentoring of a graduate student at the University at Buffalo and four middle/school teachers from the Buffalo public schools.

Graphene-based aerogels have emerged as promising water treatment platforms due to their unique structural properties including hierarchical/interconnected pores with high surface area that enable fast water/mass transport, and efficient material regeneration and reuse. The integration of photocatalytic and/or redox-active metallic nanomaterials into graphene-based aerogels have the potential to open new opportunities to design and build a new generation of integrated filtration/catalytic systems for the efficient and cost-effective treatment of PFAS contaminated water.

As a first step toward this goal, the Principal Investigator (PI) of this CAREER project proposes to leverage a unique 3D printing approach developed in the PI’s laboratory to explore the fabrication of tunable, self-standing, water-stable, and multifunctional photo/redox-catalytic graphene-metal nanohybrid aerogels as safe and effective platform for PFAS treatment and degradation. The specific objectives of the research are to: (1) Develop a 3D printing approach for catalytic graphene-metal nanohybrid aerogels and characterize the aerogel properties using state-of-the-art techniques including X-ray computed tomography with nanoscale resolution; (2) Investigate the relationships between the extents of PFAS sorption and catalytic degradation, graphene aerogel size and porosity, and water chemistry including the effects of pH, ionic strength, and natural organic matter on material performance; and (3) Elucidate the mechanisms of adsorption and degradation of PFAS by the 3D printed graphene aerogels using statistical modeling and a combination of analytical tools including Fourier transformed infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, liquid chromatography coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS), and ion chromatography (IC).

The successful completion of this project has the potential for transformative impact through the development of new adsorptive/catalytic materials and the generation of new fundamental knowledge to advance the development of integrated filtration/catalytic systems that could serve as point-of-use (POU) filters for the treatment of PFAS contaminated water. To implement the educational and training goals of this CAREER project, the PI will develop a new undergraduate/graduate course at the University at Buffalo that will focus on nanomaterial synthesis, processing, and applications to environmental remediation.

In addition, the PI plans to collaborate with teachers from the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) system to develop lesson plans to teach middle/high school students about environmental pollution and remediation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.