Read the full article by Mark Peplow (Science.org)
“In 2023, a mobile chemical reactor nicknamed Eleanor arrived at Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska with an appetite for destruction. The 3-meter-long shipping container housed a metal cylinder designed to break some of the toughest chemical bonds in nature.
Beyond the airport’s runways was a pit, once an open pool but now covered with dirt. It still held foul red water contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as ‘forever chemicals,’ along with other toxic compounds such as benzene and arsenic. The PFAS came from foams sprayed for decades as firefighters practiced putting out fires on a rusted airplane shell.
Workers drew 75,000 liters of polluted water out of the pit and extracted its PFAS as a filthy foam. They pumped this concentrate into Eleanor, which squeezed the liquid to more than 200 atmospheres, heated it to roughly the melting point of lead, and mixed it with a caustic chemical. The punishing conditions ripped apart more than 99.9% of the PFAS molecules. ‘We find our sweet spot with really nasty, high-concentration liquids,’ says Brian Pinkard, chief technology officer at Aquagga, a Washington state–based company that developed the technology. ‘It’s a very complete destruction process.'”…