Researchers at Arizona State University tested a palladium-coated membrane that removed more than 90% of each of six PFAS compounds from water over a 58-day run and stripped about 83% of the fluorine from the mixture. The system feeds hydrogen gas through the membrane, where palladium splits it into reactive hydrogen atoms that attack the carbon-fluorine bonds. That means the PFAS are chemically broken down instead of just transferred to a filter, brine, or concentrate. The study, published in PNAS, is a lab-scale demonstration, not a full treatment system. It used a mixture of six PFAS of regulatory concern, and the paper does not report full toxicology of the reaction products or performance on other PFAS. The team sees the membrane as a second stage after conventional capture methods concentrate PFAS from large volumes of water. Palladium cost, membrane lifetime, and byproduct safety are still open engineering questions.
