(8a) Lowering the Barriers to Clean Water through Catalysis

Catalysis science and engineering provide a powerful means to upgrade contaminated water to a quality level that matches its intended use, if operational constraints (ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure, variable water quality) can be overcome with materials with improved properties. I will describe two catalytic systems from my laboratory: nitrate hydrogenation to dinitrogen using In-supported Pd heterogeneous catalyst will be discussed, as a means to remove nitrate from water destructively (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.7b01371). I will show how the reaction selectivity (e.g., N₂, NH₃, and N₂H₄) can be controlled by reaction conditions and metal composition (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.9b03239). I introduce a second catalytic system (boron nitride powders, BN) that address per/polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the so-called forever chemicals. Under commercially available UV-C light and even sunlight, BN composites can photo-oxidize perfluorooctanoic acid and other PFAS compounds (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2022.137735). These reaction systems exemplify the challenges and successes of materials synthesis, modeling, structure-property analysis, and systems-level design towards catalytic converters for water.