IMAGES: GETTY; TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
TECHNION – ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Why is the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology a great choice for students interested in environmental engineering? The institute is one of Israel’s leading technology and science universities. There are several other good programs for environmental studies, but when it comes to environmental engineering, at the moment we’re the country’s top faculty. The professors are talented and inspiring
— I’m continuously in awe of the brainpower we have walking around our halls. The professors prepare graduates to go on to work in government offices as well as in the field, and we keep in touch with them, which creates a strong network for our current students.
What work do you conduct at your Environmental and Soil Chemistry Lab? Our focus is creating sustainable technologies for the remediation of polluted soils or waters. The inspiration comes from nature: we study the interactions between bacteria and soil particles, or bacteria and different surfaces, and mimic them. In other words, we look at how things get cleaned up in the environment all on their own and leverage that knowledge to create sustainable technologies that don’t leave a bigger footprint. That’s what’s important for us: the technologies we use for remediation practices have to be safe, we don’t want to synthesize new problematic materials to clean up other contaminated compartments.
You’ve recently found a way to remove toxic pollutants from drinking water. Can you tell us more about these chemicals? Polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of chemicals that have fluorine atoms connected to their carbon chain. It’s a stable structure that makes them really persistent in the environment because bacteria aren’t able to break down that carbon-to-fluorine bond. In fact, they’re often called ‘forever chemicals’: once they’re synthesized, they don’t go away. That’s why they’re turning up everywhere
— studies have shown they’re present in soils, water and any natural compartment, including our own blood samples.
How do humans become exposed to PFAS? They’re fantastic chemicals in that they do their job really well, and they’re very valuable as fire retardants and water repellents. They’ve been used in a lot of industrial products, such as clothes, furniture, nonstick Teflon pans, even those wrappers that keep hamburgers from becoming soggy — pretty much anything you might want to be water repellent.
There are many different routes of exposure,
some of which are unknown, but drinking water is one of them. When we consume them, they bio-accumulate in our bodies, and they’re toxic to humans. They’ve been linked to several diseases, and we know they damage the immune system.
Through research, you found a way to filter and remove them. What’s your solution? We already have relatively good solutions to remove most of these types of compounds from water. The issue is that, since they don’t break down, they just get moved from one medium to another. The aim is to find a more comprehensive solution that doesn’t only absorb them but gets rid of them, too. We managed to create a filter that absorbs the
compounds from water; then, once the material has reached capacity, we can add a chemical oxidant that breaks the PFAS down, releasing only non-toxic chlorine ions. The filter is then again free to absorb all new compounds.
Sounds simple enough, but how easy would it be to implement it on a larger scale? We haven’t done larger-scale implementation yet, but we’re hoping to do it in the next year or two and see how easy it actually is. Maybe we’ll be able to use the same material, maybe we’ll need to change it, but the idea as a proof of concept works, so we need to follow up on that — and not just for these compounds. There are a few different areas of research: one is scaling up this technology and seeing if it works with PFAS, but another is seeing if we can shift it to also be compatible with other problematic compounds. We have to remember that progress is
sometimes incremental. You see headlines come out in newspapers and expect these technologies to be implemented the next day, but there are other hurdles we need to overcome. Even if things seem slow, people are working to make a difference, and that’s something to remember.
How do you hope this research might inspire students to pursue the field of environmental engineering? I love being able to look at something in the micro scale and then see the macro effect. That love of chemistry I have, it’s nice that I can use it for good, for applicable technologies that can actually make a difference. For me, that’s the greatest selling point: I love what I do, but it also has greater meaning; it gives me that extra oomph. Success can be far and in between, and projects fail more often than they succeed, but there’s that added motivation: we’re working towards something that’s important.
ABOVE: Assistant professor Adi Radian
Graduate courses at the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering are taught in English and welcome international students
2022 | Israeli Academia 19
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