The health hazards posed by “forever chemicals” – per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -- pose a challenge for the water supply and treatment sector. The cost- and time-intensive processes conventionally deployed to address these toxic pollutants in potable water may soon be replaced with an efficient hydrodynamic cavitation reactor developed by an international team of researchers.

The reactor uses fast-moving liquid in restricted channels to generate and collapse small bubbles via changes in pressure. The scalable process described in Chemical Engineering Journal degrades and eliminates PFAS through this cavitation scheme.

When tested at a wastewater treatment facility in Sweden, the reactor achieved a 36% degradation rate of 11 common PFAS variants in just 30 minutes without the need for chemical additives.

“Our next step is scaling up our reactor to treat larger volumes of wastewater containing PFAS. We are aiming to treat wastewater containing PFAS volumes up to 20 liters. The reactor for this has already been built. After that, our target is to treat volumes up to 200 liters in a wastewater treatment plant in Sweden,” noted the researchers.

The hydrodynamic cavitation reactor was developed and tested by scientists from Sabanci University (Turkey), IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Ankara University (Turkey), Oxford Brookes University (U.K.), University of Oxford (U.K.) and KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden).