Motkuri on National PFAS Podcast
PNNL senior chemical engineer and material science expert, Radha Kishan Motkuri, shares his successful approach to remediation.
PNNL researchers developed a proprietary, lab-on-a-chip tool that can detect PFOS levels that are 140 times lower than the federal health advisory. It offers an unprecedented way to detect ultra-low levels of PFOS accurately on-site.
(Photo by Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
When it comes to solving the challenges associated with cancer-causing PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment and in humans, solutions will only come when various fields of science and engineering collaborate to produce superior remediation technologies.
This is the foundation of Radha Kishan Motkuri’s research, which he shares as part of a March 2022 panel for Disrupting PFAS, a podcast by Woodard & Curran, hosted by Jeffrey Hale. The podcast is now available to listen to at: Disrupting PFAS Live! Special Roundtable Finale.
Motkuri was also featured in a November 2021 Disrupting PFAS podcast, “Destruction, Detection, and Sequestration of PFAS Using Novel Materials and Processes.”
For both discussions, Motkuri, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) senior chemical engineer and material scientist, relies on his expertise in real-world nanoporous materials applications and his research into adsorption cooling/refrigeration using fluorocarbon-based refrigerants. These fluorocarbons are similar to those that underpin his study of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), guiding his methodology for remediation, including sensing, capture, and destruction.
PFAS are found in many different consumer, commercial, and industrial products. Motkuri goes on to share his outlook on collaboratively developing technologies to solve the ubiquitous challenges associated with PFAS.
“The PFAS problem is a huge problem, and material chemists alone are not going to solve it. We need a combination of various fields of science and engineering coming together to bring forth a technology that will work toward complete remediation,” explains Motkuri.
Rapid, on-site detection of super low levels of PFAS—such as perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)—is the first step to protecting human health. Yet, historically testing for PFOS takes several hours to a few days at a minimum.
In the podcasts, Motkuri speaks about a patented electrochemical PFAS Sensor he helped develop at PNNL, jointly built with Sayandev Chatterjee, formerly with PNNL and now a principal radiochemist at TerraPower, and with Sagnik Basuray, a chemical and materials engineering associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Similar to glucose detection meters and strips, their PFAS Sensor uses a chip with embedded nanoporous material—a lab-on-a-chip approach—to rapidly detect PFAS (e.g., like PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid).
Says Motkuri, “as a scientific community, we need to think about detection and capture in terms of a host-guest relationship, where the nanoporous material is the host. Our work is about tuning the fluorophilicity of the material’s structure, or its chemical affinity, to increase its interaction and functionality within the pore to get more of the guest, the PFAS, adsorbed. It is my duty to improve the technology, adsorption capacity, and selectivity between the host and the guest.”
With this approach, the researchers are able to detect PFOS at levels that are two orders of magnitude lower than the federal health advisory (0.5 ng/L). The sensor offers an unprecedented way to accurately detect minuscule amounts of PFOS in water and on site. This fast PFAS Sensor work was also selected as a 2021 R&D 100 finalist.
In the podcasts, Hale and Motkuri go on to discuss the commercialization of this sensor technology and the rapid progression from the research bench to real-world application. Future endeavors include chip expansion for even better PFAS detection, telemetry inclusion, and the potential to integrate machine learning and also improved and efficient capture and destruction methodologies.
Additionally, Motkuri is working with electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineers, fellow material scientists at PNNL, and in collaboration with industry and academia to develop technology solutions for PFAS remediation.
PNNL Content Related to PFAS
Detecting Toxic PFAS with a Chip-Sized Sensor
Fast PFAS Sensor: Forever-Chemicals Finder
PNNL Scientists Target Dangerous "Forever Chemicals" Contaminating Hundreds of U.S. Sites