This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $150,000 to Claremont McKenna College to discover enzymatic pathways to break carbon-fluorine bonds in perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFAS). PFAS are a group of persistent chemicals that are costly to remove from the environment. The project aims to engineer special enzymes that can degrade these stable chemical bonds, which could unlock new technologies for PFAS remediation in...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under CFDA 47.041, Engineering, provides $241,750 to the University of Missouri System to research the transformation mechanisms and products of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) during water disinfection processes. The 3-year project, running from August 2024 to July 2027, aims to determine how PFAS and their precursors react with common disinfectants like chlorine and ozone during drinking water treatment. The research...
This Project Grant award of $412,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will be used by the University of Massachusetts (UMass) to investigate the use of engineered polymer microparticles to adsorb and remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from wastewater. The central hypothesis is that the adsorption of PFAS molecules will alter the interfacial properties of the microparticles, causing emulsions to destabilize and allowing for the capture...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $499,997 Project Grant under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to the Regents of the University of Michigan to fund research aimed at advancing the use of persulfate and powdered activated carbon for in situ capture and destruction of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contaminating groundwater. The 3-year project will: 1) evaluate reaction kinetics for PFAS degradation using the persulfate/activated carbon treatment process, 2)...
This Project Grant award for $420,000.00, provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), will develop a novel photochemical system to degrade per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water. The research aims to (1) investigate the working mechanisms of the new reaction system, (2) examine its performance in degrading various PFAS, (3) characterize PFAS degradation pathways and products, and (4) evaluate and improve the system's performance...
This $499,988 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) seeks to develop and validate an integrated sorption-photocatalytic process for the ex-situ treatment and remediation of groundwater contaminated by mixtures of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and chlorinated solvents like trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). The principal investigator and research team at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will...
This $200,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to develop a portable, low-cost sensor system that can detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "forever chemicals," in water in real-time. The key objectives of this 2-year project are to: 1) create a selective sensing material by modifying polyaniline with fluorous surfactants to improve PFAS detection sensitivity; 2) design a dual-modal...
This two-year, $194,025 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems will fund the development of a low-cost, mass-scale sorbent for removing toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from drinking water. Montclair State University will design a fluorinated block copolymer sorbent that leverages self-assembly at solid-liquid interfaces to facilitate PFAS elimination. The porous polymer will be synthesized...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems awarded a $301,130 project grant to The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (SUNY) to study the molecular and nanoscale structure and interactions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in aqueous solutions, at interfaces, and with other surfactants. The research aims to develop fundamental knowledge that supports improved water quality and the design of...
The University of Illinois has received a $500,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems under CFDA No. 47.041 - Engineering. The goal of this 3-year grant is to design, evaluate, and optimize an integrated electrosorption and electrocatalytic process that can selectively extract and degrade short-chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from semiconductor manufacturing wastewater....