One of the most notorious " forever chemical substance " is perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA . By their very conception , these substances are passing difficult to degrade , which makes them very useful in industrial coating but also bad for our health and the environment as they tend to roll up .

A couple of days ago , investigator exploit out that using boron nitride – which is commercially used in cosmetics – and exposing it to ultraviolet ( UV ) radiation at 254 nanometers , could demolish 99 percent of PFOA in a water sample . A fantastic resolution but one that ask improvements .

“ That was great because PFOA is an more and more problematical pollutant that ’s really hard to destroy , ” Michael Wong , from Rice University and corresponding source of the research , said in astatement . “ But it was also less than ideal because the boron nitride was activated by short - undulation ultraviolet illumination , and the aura filters out almost all of the little - moving ridge UV from sunlight . We require to push as much as possible boron nitride ’s power to access energy from other wavelength of sunlight . ”

As describe in the study , the solution to that thorny problem was to apply titanium dioxide , another vulgar chemical that is used in substances like sunscreen . Titanium dioxide is activated by the ultraviolet light ignitor that can penetrate the ozone layer and it can break down PFOA but very slowly compare to the very efficient atomic number 5 nitride .

The squad make a composite of boron nitride and titanium dioxide and notice that they had a meaning with the best of both man . It was activated by the UV light in the standard pressure and it was capable of destroying PFOA very promptly . In deionize body of water , it engage less than three hours to offend down 99 percent of the PFOA into atomic number 6 dioxide , fluorine , and mineral . In piquant water , the process takes about nine hour .

The team will now look into how good this substance is at breaking down other perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances ( PFAS ) – the broader class of forever chemicals . late reviews of their chemistryhighlight just how little we know about them .

The study is print in theChemical Engineering Journal .

An early version of this article was publish inJuly 2022 .