Forever chemicals such as perfluorinated compounds (PFAS and PFOS) or chlorinated compounds (Absorbable Organic Halogens (AOX) and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)) are widespread environmental pollutants which are implicated with cancer and other serious harmful effects to human health. Due to their extensive use and persistence, these substances have accumulated in the environment.
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Regulation demands the removal of those compounds towards ppb level. However, due to their stability, currently only expensive adsorption techniques can be used with sometimes even unsatisfactory results.

These techniques concentrate the contaminant for later incineration. This leads to high costs and energy requirements. Out process can selectively destroy those compounds rather than adsorb them.

Peracid acid and other peracid species are normally produced in acid (>1% H2SO4), at temperatures between 30°C and 70°C and with high hydrogen peroxide concentration (25-90%).

This in conjunction with their very low stability and explosive character lead to a number of constraints including:
i) need for centralised production;
ii) transportation safety concerns; 
iii) availability of only a small number of peracid derivatives beyond peracid acid and;
iv) limitations on applications due to acid content.

We developed and patented an innovative, robust and low-cost catalytic material, which allows us to use oxygen present in air as an efficient precursor to generate a wide range of high concentration peracid solutions.

The process shows fast kinetics and, unlike prior art, it takes place at room temperature and ambient pressure.

The International Energy Agency reports costs associated with cleaning industrial wastewater, including the food and beverage sector, in the range of £9 billion in 2018 with expected Compound Annual Growth Rate of 5.8% between 2019 and 2026. The market size for municipal systems is around £80 billion/year.

Existing wastewater treatment processes require electricity consumption as high as 1% globally. This is because most of these processes rely on microorganisms which are suspended in the waste stream and have to be constantly supplied with oxygen through air blowers. Furthermore, the biological metabolism is slow, leading to a large system footprint and high GHG emissions.

Additionally, the organisms are sensitive to variations in the effluent conditions, making close process control necessary.
SGL´s technology involves chemical oxidation on poison resistant heterogeneous catalysts which can be used in highly efficient fixed bed reactors, such as those used and optimised in the chemical industry.

In addition, the avoidance of biological processes offers benefits such as a lower system footprint, due to the higher reaction rate, insensibility to variations in composition due to the robustness of the inorganic catalyst and eradication of lengthy start-up and shut down for maintenance which can take weeks in some biological reactors.

These benefits allow for a very competitive CAPEX but predominantly a dramatic decrease in the OPEX cost, which are mainly energy costs, of up to 80% when compared to biological reactors due to significantly higher oxygen transfer efficiency..

Forever chemicals such as perfluorinated and chlorinated compounds (PFAS and PFOS) are widespread environmental pollutants which are implicated with cancer and other serious harmful effects to human health. Due to their extensive use and persistence, these substances have accumulated in the environment.
‍
Regulation demands the removal of those compounds towards ppb level. However, due to their stability, currently only expensive adsorption techniques can be used with sometimes even unsatisfactory results.

These techniques concentrate the contaminant for later incineration. This leads to high costs and energy requirements.