Abatement of Perfluorocarbons in Teflon-Manufacturing Wastewater with Photo-Reduction Method

Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) are anthropogenic contaminants which have prompted much concern regarding their environment persistence and bioaccumulation. The main sources of PFCs are from wastewater of fluorine chemical. Decomposition and defluorination of PFCs in wastewater by photo-induced hydrated electrons was well and firstly investigated in this paper. In this work the proposed method was tested to deal with PFCs containing wastewaters from a Teflon-manufacturing plant in Jiangsu Province, China. 95.5% of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was decomposed after 12 hours treatment and defluorination rate of PFCs could reach about 60%. PFCs were transformed into harmless fluoride, acetic acid and formic acid. It was suggested this system can efficiently decompose PFCs from fluorine chemical plant. In brief, this study demonstrates that the photo-reduction is a high efficient, energy-saving method which produced less-toxic products for PFCs removal, compared with activated carbon absorption and combustion.