ABSTRACT
The persistence, prevalence, bioaccumulativeness, and toxicity of PFAS requires an "all-hands-on-deck" approach to manage and treat its presence in the environment. Catalysis science and engineering provide a powerful means to address this "forever chemicals" problem. I will describe recent developments stemming from our discovery of room-temperature PFAS-degrading capabilities of boron nitride (BN) under ultraviolet light irradiation (10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00434). BN shows excellent photocatalytic activity due in part to the presence of structural defects allowing light absorption in the UV-C range (10.1021/acs.est.2c01637), and the hydrophobic nature of its surface. BN surpasses the prototypical photocatalyst titanium oxide (TiO2); a materials composite of BN and TiO2 has improved capabilities over either material (10.1016/j.cej.2022.137735). Chemical engineering principles are critical to the successful development of UV/BN-photocatalysis and other PFAS destruction technologies.
Bio
Dr. Michael S. Wong is Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He holds the Tina and Sunit Patel Chair in Molecular Nanotechnology. Michael is the principal investigator of the Catalysis and Nanomaterials Laboratory, and Research Thrust Leader in the Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Engineering Research Center. His clean-water/clean-energy research program has generated over 190 publications, with a cumulative citation count of >16K. He has an h-index of >65. He has received numerous honors over the years, including the MIT TR35 Young Innovator Award, the North American Catalysis Society/Southwest Catalysis Society Excellence in Applied Catalysis Award, and AIChE NSEF Young Investigator Award. Michael is the recipient of the 2023 Lawrence K. Cecil Award. He is a Fellow of AIChE, the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) (https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~wonglab/ProfWong.html).
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