SBIR Phase I: Scaling and Tailoring the Destruction of Emerging Contaminants with the Plasma Water Reactor

The broader impacts of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project are the promotion of water equity and the protection of U.S. water supplies. Pollutants persist in air, food, and water. Current technologies either produce hazardous waste or are ineffective, and therefore there is a strong public health motivation to proactively destroy prevalent pollutants and convert waste streams into value streams. Plasmas can convert contaminants into harmless fundamental compounds, but previous plasma-based water purifiers could not scale. This project explores the feasibility of custom and scaled plasma-based water treatment. The resulting platform technology provides immediate relief to institutions and individuals suffering from contaminated water supplies. It will yield an increasingly positive impact on the environment due to the production of reclaimed water, the elimination of waste, and the reduction of carbon footprint and energy use. It will also promote resource recovery, public health, sustainability within the water-energy-food nexus, and water equity for socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. This SBIR Phase I project manipulates geometry and power to achieve effective, efficient, customized, and scaled plasma-based water treatment. This project uses close-packed water streams to amplify plasma propagation. This geometric approach minimizes energy consumption and maximizes the plasma-water interface, enabling previously inaccessible commercial flow rates. This project will investigate plasma-based destruction of relevant pollutants in advanced water treatment trains used for potable reuse. Due to their toxicity, persistence, prevalence, and relevance, 1,4-dioxane, N-nitrosodimethylamine, and per-/polyfluoroalkyl substances will be used as indicator compounds to probe various water qualities and meet the following goals: 1+ log reduction of contaminants, concentrations below maximum contaminant levels or health advisory limits, and a practical flow rate of >0.5 gallons per minute that fulfills 0.5-log reduction of 1,4-dioxane. Kinetics and surrogate parameters are evaluated in reverse osmosis permeate and concentrate, granular activated carbon effluent, and anion exchange effluent and regenerant. For each water matrix, plasma performance is modeled as a function of water quality and energy consumption and operational costs are compared to established water reuse processes. These novel experiments will advance the technical and financial feasibility of customized and scaled plasma-based water treatment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.