This will be the last edition of Enspired before the holidays, and we cover some really interesting topics, including one in the photocatalyst space. I’ll be honest: I didn’t even know there was a photocatalyst space until the article I reference came out! Let’s take a look.
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Photocatalyst System Aims to Breakdown PFAs
Maradon 333/Shutterstock.com
One of the best—though some might argue worst—creations from hydrocarbons is plastic, which we use to make everything from safety equipment to single-use packaging and water bottles.
Too much of anything has drawbacks: Plastic has also worked its way into nearly every natural system, including our own bodies, a concern that has garnered some attention of late.
Super resilient: One particular class of plastics,perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, earns special attention for its extreme resistance to degradation.
Also called “forever chemicals,” PFAs and their hardiness can be considered both a plus and a minus: They can keep food fresh, coat nonstick pans, and serve key purposes in firefighting tools, but their abundance can be problematic for our health and the environment.
PFAs have carbon-fluorine bonds, which are extremely strong and resist typical breakdown pathways, including hydrolysis, oxidation, and microbial breakdown.
Conventional water treatments can remove PFAS from water sources, but those processes basically concentrate the PFAS, which are then sent to landfills where they can leach back out into the environment.
Some Colorado-based researchers are hoping to mitigate the damage done from PFAs using a new photocatalytic system.
How it works: A photocatalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction using light but is not consumed in the process. This particular system uses cheap blue LEDs to drive a set of chemical reactions.
After absorbing the light, the photocatalyst transfers electrons to the molecules containing fluorine, which breaks down those carbon-fluorine bonds.
That breakdown holds the potential for complete mineralization, which could have byproducts such as hydrocarbons and fluoride atoms.
Those end products are easier to dispose of.
My oil and gas geoscientist brain read, “hydrocarbons as a byproduct,” and immediately wondered if those could have some other use.
Oil and gas can get a bad rap for the materials our products produce, but this process shows some promise, though typical barriers remain, including upscaling and targeting bigger molecules such as Teflon.
Geoscientists have a role to play in these next steps, including understanding how and if these byproducts can be useful or otherwise safely discarded and broken down in the environment, as well as figuring out how to upscale this technology.
Salt has capabilities far beyond driving up your blood pressure: A company called Bedrock Minerals sees potential in this powerful ion as a replacement for lithium in batteries.
The need for lithium has dramatically increased and is only predicted to continue its upward trajectory as the energy transition continues.
But lithium can be hard to find and extract, despite various innovations in the mining and extraction processes.
Sodium, on the other hand is extremely abundant in comparison—1,000 times more. Personally, I like to put incredible amounts on just about any food I consume.
Sodium-ion batteries won’t need just sodium, but their other materials are also abundant: iron, manganese, aluminum, and carbon.
Using relatively new chemistry that the company is not disclosing, Bedrock Materials claims their sodium-ion batteries will be able to compete with lithium-ion batteries eventually, and they have a plan of attack to get there.
“It’s classic ‘disrupt from the bottom.’ Start with something that is honestly worse, but it’s cheaper, and work your way up from there as the technology gets better,” said Spencer Gore, the startup’s founder. They’re going to go after the starter batteries in a standard internal combustion engine first.
As the technology improves, Gore has his sights on the EV battery market.
This type of innovation screams out for geoscientists, both on the sourcing front, but also in integrating with other processes whose byproducts could be used in batteries (looking at you, carbon capture).
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