RII Track-4:NSF: Characterization of Extractable Organic Fluorine as an Indicator of Total PFASs to Close the Fluorine Mass Balance in Potable Reuse Scenarios

This project seeks to bridge the gap between academics and the wealth of practical knowledge held by the industry and practitioners to build upon water research at the University of Alabama (UA). Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have been produced since the late 1940s in industrial and consumer applications due to their desired functionality and production capability.

There are currently 4,700 PFAS on the global market, yet most research and regulations primarily focus on ~30 targeted PFASs. There is an unknown burden of PFAS contamination in our water and wastewater facilities. This project will allow researchers from UA to conduct studies at the Water Tower to learn new PFAS characterization techniques and to create industry and utility partnerships outside the walls of isolated research laboratories.

This research seeks to learn a transformative approach to measure extractable organic fluorine (EOF) while quantifying the proportion of organofluorine attributed to known PFAS to close the fluorine mass balance in potable reuse scenarios. This work will provide training for one graduate student, and results will be integrated into undergraduate curriculum and research.

The research collaboration formed through this project will help develop capacity at UA to advance progress toward a standardized EOF method for all utilities, providing additional opportunities to educate and train graduate and undergraduate students.

This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows (RII Track-4) project will provide a fellowship to an assistant professor and training for a graduate student at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa. This work would be conducted in collaboration with researchers at the Water Tower Institute in Burford, GA. The goal of the proposed project is to create partnerships with the Water Tower and use their laboratories and demonstration facility with live flows from the adjacent advanced wastewater treatment facility, The F.

Wayne Hill Water Resources Center (WRC), to test the overarching hypothesis that bulk organofluorine measurements can be a key indicator of Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs, CnF2n+1-R) contamination. The project will seek to develop methods to close the fluorine mass balance in wastewater treatment whose effluent supplies an indirect potable reuse treatment facility.

The project will use combustion ion-chromatography (CIC) and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) methods that are characterization tools to measure extractable organic fluorine (EOF) and targeted PFAS. Two objectives will carry out the research plan: (1) Establish scholarly collaborations with investigators at The Water Tower and learn EOF-CIC and LC-MS/MS characterization techniques to characterize total extractable organofluorine while quantifying the proportion of organofluorine attributed to known PFAS in potable reuse scenarios, and (2) Determine the occurrence of unknown PFAS in environmental samples and close the fluorine mass balance for potable reuse scenarios.

The collaboration developed between UA and The Water Tower will generate high-quality undergraduate and graduate research opportunities in the field of water reuse and wastewater treatment while building upon UA's water research mission.

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.