Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds, or PFAS for short, are harmful to health, thermally and chemically stable, water-, grease- and dirt-repellent and can be found in many everyday products. They can now also be detected in many soils and bodies of water. Their removal using conventional filter technologies is very costly and hardly feasible.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB are successfully using a plasma-based technology in the joint project AtWaPlas. Contaminated water is fed into a combined glass and stainless steel cylinder where it is treated with ionized gas - the plasma. This reduces the molecular chains of PFAS and thus enables the toxic substance to be removed cost-effectively. Compared to conventional methods such as filtering with activated carbon, the technology developed at the Fraunhofer IGB has a decisive advantage: Although activated carbon filters can bind the harmful substances, they cannot eliminate them. This means that the filters have to be replaced and disposed of regularly. The AtWaPlas technology, on the other hand, can eliminate the harmful substances without leaving any residue and is very efficient and low-maintenance.
