- Title
- Effect of different co-foaming agents on PFAS removal from the environment by foam fractionation
- Creator
- Buckley, Thomas; Karanam, Kavitha; Han, Han; Vo, Hoang Nhat Phong; Shukla, Pradeep; Firouzi, Mahshid; Rudolph, Victor
- Relation
- Water Research Vol. 230, Issue 15 February 2023, no. 119532
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2022.119532
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are recalcitrant, synthetic chemicals that are ubiquitous in the environment because of their widespread use in a variety of consumer and industrial products. PFAS contamination has become an increasing issue in recent years, which needs to be urgently addressed. Foam fractionation is emerging as a potential remediation option that removes PFAS by adsorption to the surface of rising air bubbles which are removed from the system as a foam. PFAS concentrations in the environment are often not sufficient to allow for formation of a foam by itself and often a co-foaming agent is required to be added to enhance the foamability of the solution. In this study, the effect of different classes of co-foaming agents, anionic, non-ionic, zwitterionic and cationic surfactants on the removal of PFAS with varying fluorocarbon chain length from 3 to 8 in a foam fractionation process have been investigated. Evaluation of the air-water interface partitioning coefficient (k’) in addition with surface tension and PFAS removal results support the contention that using a co-foaming agent with the opposite charge to the PFAS in question significantly facilitates the adsorption of PFAS to the air-water interface, enhancing the efficiency of the process. Using the non-ionic surfactant (no headgroup electrostatic interaction with PFAS), as a reference, it was observed, in terms of PFAS separation and rate of PFAS removal, that anionic co-surfactant performed worst, zwitterionic was better, and cationic co-surfactant performed best. All of the PFAS species were able to be removed below the limit of detection (0.05 µg/L) after 45 minutes of foaming time with the cationic surfactant.
- Subject
- foam fractionation; PFAS; water treatment; emerging contaminants; groundwater; SDG 6; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1479036
- Identifier
- uon:50270
- Identifier
- ISSN:0043-1354
- Language
- eng
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