Removal of PFOA with magnetic composite materials

Author

Rodríguez Rodríguez, Ana

The use of photocatalysts have been a major innovation in the removal process of harmful micropollutants such as Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). However, one of the biggest inconveniences of using photocatalytic materials is that they are not easy to recover from water once they have been used. Since the material cannot be recovered from the water, it cannot be reused. Furthermore, in some cases, it can generate secondary pollution due to its presence in the water. Therefore, this work aims to study the synthesis and characterization of photocatalysts based on the presence of ferrite. The use of ferrite in this type of material can provide magnetic properties that would considerably facilitate their recovery from water by simply using a magnet. The main elements that have been used to synthesize the base composites are activated carbon and graphene oxide. Once the base composites had been synthesized, the materials were modified using doping processes. Once all the materials had been synthesized, they were tested in the defluorination rate achieved for PFOA and characterized.
All the composited tested were 100% magnetic. By evaluating all the defluorination results obtained, it can be said that the ferrite doped with 10% of indium (10%In-Ferrite) composite is the one presenting the best performance. A 20.17% degree of defluorination has been achieved. Moreover, around the 78% of this material can be recovered from the water by only using a magnet. The test and optimization of different synthesis and operational parameters, such as different calcination temperatures and different photodegrading pHs, has been done.
This work also includes a final section with some proposals for future work to optimize the materials and thus obtain better results.

Director

González Olmos, Rafael
Abad Roldán, Manuel David

Degree

IQS SE - Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering

Date

2022-06-05