Date & Time: Oct 18 2024 | 11:30am Location: Davison Life Sciences Building, Room C120 PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been used in a variety of applications over the past 70 years, ranging from firefighting foam to nonstick cookware. The strong carbon-fluorine bond is what gives these substances their desirable chemical characteristics, but this is also the cause of their greatest drawback. They are known as “forever chemicals,” highly persistent chemicals that do not occur in nature, and many of which have been found to negatively affect human health. Thus, in recent years the scientific community has made significant advances in understanding how to safely dispose of and destroy PFAS to prevent further bioaccumulation and harm to human health. Activated carbon and ion-exchange are commonly used techniques for PFAS removal from water, but these techniques leave waste contaminated by PFAS that requires further treatment or special disposal. One possible solution is plasma-mediated degradation of aqueous PFAS. In this study, three PFAS in a thermal, weakly ionized, argon/electron plasma were investigated from 300-600 K using a Langmuir probe–flowing afterglow apparatus. The results were then supported by density functional theory calculations. Wiens, J. P., Miller, T. M., Ard, S. G., Viggiano, A. A., & Shuman, N. S. (2022). Elementary Reactions Leading to Perfluoroalkyl Substance Degradation in an Ar+/e– Plasma. The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 126(48), 9076-9086. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpca.2c04898 Type of Event: Physical Seminar Research Areas: Physical Chemistry Annabelle Webb Hill Department: Graduate Student, Department of Chemistry University of Georgia Learn more about the speaker https://chem.uga.edu/directory/people/annabelle-webb
