Researchers at Rice University, in collaboration with colleauges in South Korea, have developed a technology that can capture and breakdown PFAS chemicals in liquid streams, according to Science Daily.
The layered double hydroxide (LDH) technology, made with copper and aluminum materials, was first published in Advanced Materials on September 25, 2025. Youngkun Chung led the project as a postoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Rice George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing Professor Michael S. Wong. Korea Advanced Institute of Scient and Technology Professor Seoktae Kang and Keon-Ham Kim, a professor at Pukyung National University in South Korea, collaborated with the researchers at Rice.
How the layered double hydroxide technology works
The copper and aluminum layers are ordered in such a way that with some charge imbalances, PFAS chemicals attach quickly and strongly. Quoted in the Science Daily report, Chug said he was astonished that the LDH technology "captured PFAS more than 1,000 times better than other materials."
"It also worked incredibly fast, removing large amounts of PFAS within minutes, about 100 times faster than commercial carbon filters," Chung said in the Science Daily report.
For a more technical explanation, Advanced Materials published the following in its abstract to highlight what the technology does to achieve adsorption and defluorination.
Here, it is observed that a high interlayer crystallinity of nitrate intercalated CuxAl layered double hydroxides (LDH) (CuxAl-NO3 LDH) enables a boundary-breaking performance of maximum adsorption capacity (qmax) of PFOA as 1702 mg g−1 at neutral pH and room temperature. The Al-Al clash within the cationic layers (basal plane disorder) enhances adsorption kinetics (k1 = 13.2 h−1), as determined by a 2H magic angle spinning (MAS) solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy. Furthermore, PFOA-saturated Cu2Al-NO3 LDH can be regenerated through its memory effect, achieving ≈54% defluorination of the adsorbed PFOA in the presence of CaCO3 after the thermal treatment at 773 K (500 °C).
In other words, the technology was effective in adsorbing PFOA, and when heated up to 500ºC with the presence of clacium carbonate (CaCO3), more than half of the PFOA was defluorinated, suggesting a promising option for PFOA destruction or disposal. This process also regenerated the material for reuse in removal and destruction efforts.
Tested scenarios: Rivers, tap water and wastewater
The technology was tested in tap water, wastewater systems and river water where its efficacy remained true for all three. The researchers conducted these tests, according to the Science Daily report, in continuous flow situations as well as static water scenarios.
This too was referenced in the Avanced Materials abstract for the paper, highlighting the possibilities for treating PFAS-contaminated water:
Performance in continuous fixed-bed systems (720 mg g−1 at 0.5 mL min−1) and PFOA-spiked real water matrices indicates the practical application potential of CuxAl-NO3 LDH, suggesting an effective integrated ultrafast capture–thermal destruction–recycling (CTR) process for treating PFAS-contaminated water.
