Researchers at the University of Utah have forged a new frontier in the fight against contamination by “forever chemicals.” Specifically, they’ve developed a material that is not only adept at extracting toxic perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) from water but also doubles as a real-time detector of this contaminant. As reported by At The U, the team, led by Professor Ling Zang of the College of Engineering, crafted a dual-functional metal-organic framework (MOF) dubbed UiO-66-N(CH₃)₃⁺ that shatters previous standards for both PFOA adsorption and fluorescence-based detection.
Rooted in an industry-funded study released in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, the material showcases a remarkable adsorption capacity of 1178 mg/g for PFOA, skyrocketing past traditional materials like activated carbon. Moreover, it effectively snatches nearly 100% of PFOA from solutions within a brisk five minutes. “This MOF represents a major leap forward for PFAS remediation,” lead author and postdoctoral researcher Rana Dalapati told At The U. Notably, a single gram of this innovative material can persistently remove and detect PFOA in complex environmental samples, retaining over 93% of its capacity after five cycles of use and regeneration…