Can porous carbons be a remedy for PFAS pollution in water? A perspective

Per- and polyfluoro alkyl substance (PFAS) is a class of emerging pollutants in various water streams in many countries of the world. PFAS compounds present a wide range of hazards and there is an increasing concern about the health impacts of humans. Several approaches have been proposed to remove PFAS from water and one of the approaches is its adsorptive removal in porous carbons. Many experiments suggested the promising features of porous carbons in successfully removing PFAS from water, however, there are some bottlenecks to fully implement this material for PFAS removal purposes. In this perspective article, we have discussed the advantages of porous carbons in the PFAS removal process and compared its performance with other adsorbents. Based on the hypothetical interactions between surface functionalities of carbon and PFAS, we recommended the modified and customized structures of porous carbons that are expected to demonstrate better performance. We emphasized that incorporation of hierarchical porosity, and enhancement of affinity towards PFAS molecule by incorporating fluorophilicity, hydrophobicity and positive charge on the surface would facilitate the better adsorption of PFAS by carbonaceous sorbents. We also incorporated the computational analysis that may reveal the interactions between the PFAS and the porous carbon in the atomic level and ultimately assist in designing a better variety of porous carbons with superior performance towards PFAS removal.