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Rice scientists pioneer method to tackle ‘forever chemicals’ | New process upcycles hazardous chemicals, ‘transforms waste into a resource’ (news.rice.edu)

submitted 3 weeks ago by solo@slrpnk.net to c/zerowaste@slrpnk.net

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm kind of pressing x to doubt here

Pfas is not A chemical, it's a large collection of different chemicals (Wikipedia says in the millions) with different elements and to say that one method converts all of them in graphene sounds rather ridiculous at best.

note: not a chemist here, I just have some basic understanding of chemistry, but I do understand that different materials require different processes to manage

[–] Jimny_Crkt@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

From the article, they are converting the granular activated carbon (GAC) that holds the PFAS into graphene. The PFAS itself is just converted "into inert, nontoxic fluoride salts."

GAC is one way to filter PFAS out of drinking water, but then you're left with a bunch of PFAS-laden media that you have to do something with. So this is one potential method of dealing with that.