Earlier this year scientists in Australia showcased a new solution that can be used to remove dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ from water by making the chemicals and contaminants magnetic, allowing them to be easily attracted and removed.
This new solution is simply added to water making the chemicals magnetic, a magnet can then be used to attract the pollutants and separate them from the water.
Forever chemicals are commonly used thanks to their ability to repel water and oil, but this compound is not good for health and the stable molecules are very hard to degrade.
However, scientists from the University of Queensland have created a solution that can remove these pollutants from water using just a magnet.
Their research team has created a solution called a “magnetic fluorinated polymer sorbent”. This solution covers the PFAS molecules when it is added to contaminated water making them magnetic, meaning they can be easily removed.
This new solution comes with several advantages when compared to older methods such as it doesn’t require any extra energy to trigger the reaction and the solution itself can be reused up to 10 times and it can work much faster than others.
“Our method shows it is possible to remove more of these chemicals in a way that is faster, cheaper, cleaner, and very simple,” said Dr. Cheng Zhang, co-author of the study to New Atlas.
“Because our process does not need electricity, it can be used in remote and off-grid communities. Our team will now scale up the testing and we hope to have a commercially available product ready in the next three years.”