neutralize sounds good, but then.... PFAS used to sound good.

Ionizing is quite the antonym to neutralizing…

Reads like an ad for a company that does not really inform the reader as to much of anything other than "Hey, I knew nothing but now I have a company."

10s of gallons per minute is an not a good return on investment. By my calculations, the government will give this company $1 billion dollars in grants for a bathtub of "clean" water.

3M told DuPont way back in 1991 that PFAS was dangerous.

You’ll excuse me if I’m skeptical that a university professor beat 2 of the worlds largest chemical companies to the answer for the mess they made.

The thread title is a Top Gear reference

Hey, shit happens. A chemical engineer discovered kevlar while trying to make a better tire for DuPont. Sometimes the greatest advances are just a big oopsie.

Perhaps they have a solution but simply will not release it

We already have the technology to remove PFAS. Another method is good, but I will remain skeptical until they can demonstrate at full scale. This sounds a lot like the articles that say there is a new cure for a disease, and we never see it come to fruition.

From the EPA: "It is currently known that three treatment processes can be effective for PFAS removal: granular activated carbon, ion exchange resins, and high-pressure membrane systems. The optimal choice between these technologies is a balance between many factors."

You assume it was cost-effective enough for DuPont or 3M to bother.

This. We already have proven techniques to remove PFAS from water. The issue preventing large-scale deployment of these technologies is the flow rate and scalability. When you're looking at treating widespread groundwater contamination or an entire municipal source, these technologies can't meet the need in any cost-effective way. They'd need to be operating continuously for multiple years to even come close to full remediation, which would come with a price tag in the neighborhood of multiple billions at least.

Seems to dovetail nicely with the farmwork Jezza's been up to

If those guys have a solution it probably smells like cancer and tastes like bubblegum. You don't want to know what's in it.

Large scale removal is just starting. It's expensive and not efficient. These chemicals will be with us indefinitely. Same with plastics. Don't worry too much though. Shorter life spans aren't a huge deal when climate change, ocean acidification and insect collapse will crash our population. Humanity and capitalism are great.

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Teflon/PTFE was also an accidental discovery by a DuPont man; ironically it’s also one of the mostly widely used PFAS chemicals ever lol

Make the chemical companies pay for it.

Huge news.

Cost of pumping water to start extracting PFAS from gigantic groundwater reservoirs, and other locations is huge.

Getting something done in a lab, and performing the same on an industrial scale are two very different processes.

It took a college professor decades of research and dozens upon dozens of court cases to get lead out of gasoline and paint.

I'm not surprised in the least.

You're right. So we should just stop right now and not investigate any further. Don't bother trying to find a valid way of scaling it up, random reddit user says it can't be done so let's just forget the whole thing.