A plasma bubble column.
“Plasma is a highly reactive cocktail of oxygen species which has the potential to effectively breakdown PFAS, chemicals which have polluted water sources,” said Professor Cullen.
“The project aims to develop a new class of plasma water treatment reactor that can degrade PFAS simply and economically, that will be scaled and tested at contaminated sites around Australia,” he said.
Bubble columns are gas and liquid chambers that are widely used in the chemical and fermentation industries.
In use since the 1940s, PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals that can be found in a wide range of products such as carpets, firefighting foams and industrial chemicals.
Professor Cullen hopes the technology could also be applied to other difficult to treat pollutants including pesticides, pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors.
