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Merits, limitations and innovation priorities for heterogeneous catalytic platforms to destroy PFAS

Nature Water volume 3, pages 644–654 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Heterogeneous catalysis has the potential to efficiently and sustainably mineralize per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) with low material and energy inputs. However, the implementation of catalytic technologies is hindered by the large variety of PFAS compounds requiring treatment, a limited understanding of catalytic PFAS-degradation mechanisms and pathways, poor catalytic process selectivity towards PFAS over other water constituents, and a lack of appropriate methods to compare catalytic treatment options. Here we recommend strategies to overcome these challenges, including pretreating complex PFAS mixtures to simplify the design space of catalytic treatments, engineering catalytic systems and catalyst surfaces for selectivity, and developing holistic figures of merit that consider defluorination efficiencies and life-cycle costs to push forward the research, development and deployment of catalytic technologies for PFAS mineralization. Research needs to realize these designs and include a better understanding of the reaction mechanisms, catalyst surface engineering and treatment process design.

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Fig. 1: Proposed approach to pretreat complex PFAS mixtures to simplify catalyst design for effective treatment.
Fig. 2: Potential degradation steps and associated catalytic processes for PFAS mineralization.
Fig. 3: Strategies to improve catalyst selectivity for PFAS.
Fig. 4: Roadmap towards the holistic assessment of catalysis approaches for PFAS treatments.
Fig. 5: Range of reported defluorination rate constants and calculated defluorination energy efficiency, EEOD.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by the National Science Foundation Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (EEC-1449500). G.V.L. and H.A.S.-C. acknowledge funding support from the NIEHS (R01ES032708) for their contributions. H.A.S.-C. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE2140739) and a Dean’s Fellowship from the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. W.C. and T.Z. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22125603 and 22020102004).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Sarah Glass, Hosea A. Santiago-Cruz.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Sarah Glass, Michael S. Wong & Pedro J. J. Alvarez

  2. The Rice WaTER Institute, Houston, TX, USA

    Sarah Glass, Thomas P. Senftle, Michael S. Wong & Pedro J. J. Alvarez

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Hosea A. Santiago-Cruz & Gregory V. Lowry

  4. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Pollution Processes and Environmental Criteria, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Pollution Control, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

    Wei Chen & Tong Zhang

  5. Department of Civil, Environmental & Construction Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Jennifer Guelfo

  6. Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Bruce Rittmann

  7. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Thomas P. Senftle, Haotian Wang, Michael S. Wong & Pedro J. J. Alvarez

  8. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Peter Vikesland

  9. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Dino Villagrán

  10. Global Center for Water Technology, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Paul Westerhoff

  11. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guibin Jiang

Authors
  1. Sarah Glass
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  2. Hosea A. Santiago-Cruz
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  3. Wei Chen
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  4. Tong Zhang
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  5. Jennifer Guelfo
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  6. Bruce Rittmann
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  7. Thomas P. Senftle
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  8. Peter Vikesland
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  9. Dino Villagrán
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  10. Haotian Wang
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  11. Paul Westerhoff
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  12. Michael S. Wong
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  13. Guibin Jiang
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  14. Gregory V. Lowry
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  15. Pedro J. J. Alvarez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory V. Lowry.

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Nature Water thanks Timothy Strathmann and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Glass, S., Santiago-Cruz, H.A., Chen, W. et al. Merits, limitations and innovation priorities for heterogeneous catalytic platforms to destroy PFAS. Nat Water 3, 644–654 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-025-00433-8

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