Degradation of Low Concentrated Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) from Water Samples Using Non-Thermal Atmospheric Plasma (NTAP)

• DOI: 10.3390/en11051290
• Publication Date: 2018-05-21T08:07:30Z
• Authors: Vojislav Jovicic; Muhammad Jehanzai...; Ana Zbogar-Rasic; Nataliia Fedorova; Alexander Poser; Peter Swoboda; Antonio Delgado
• Keywords: Degradation; Nonthermal plasma

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are manmade chemicals, containing the covalent C-F bond, which is among strongest chemical bonds known to organic chemistry. Abundant use of these chemicals contaminates air, water, and soil around world. Despite recent initiatives legal regulations set reduce their omnipresence, conventional water purification processes either inefficient or very expensive, especially for low PFC contamination levels. This research focused on non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) decomposition concentrations (<1 µg/L) PFCs (especially perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS)), present in wastewater produced during process removal from contaminated soil. The efficiency was investigated oxygen, nitrogen plasma, with exposure times 1–10 min different nozzle- reactor sizes. Experiments demonstrated that NTAP treatment an efficient alternative method degradation more than 50% initial concentration samples, less 200 s. final showed strong dependency tested parameters. effect be strongly non-linear time, followed by reduction pH-value treated sample, might a limiting factor further decomposition.