A common coating known as Teflon can prevent food from sticking to dishes, but are notoriously difficult to break safely. Now researchers from the UK have found a simple and cost-effective solution to the problem. The results aren't just environmentally friendly – they can also be recycled into useful products. toothpaste And drinking water additives. According to their study, published Oct. 22 in the journal Journal of the American Chemical Societyall you need is a little sodium metal and vigorous shaking.
More than 85 years have passed since DuPont introduced Teflon to the world. Introduced in 1938 and technically known as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the chemically inert synthetic polymer is best known for providing impressive non-stick coatings on cookware and other surfaces. It is also widely used as a lubricant for corrosive materials containers and even for medical equipment such as catheters.
Teflon is as famous as it is infamous. Part of a big family poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFA), these synthetics are now synonymous with numerous environmental And public health issues. When burned, they also release toxic substances.”forever chemicals“, which persist in the environment for thousands of years. Researchers have been experimenting with ways to combat Teflon for years, including a strategy that combines chemical additives and LED light treatment.
Chemists collaborating between the UK's University of Birmingham and Newcastle University may have an even simpler solution. The key to their approach is mechanochemistry. Gaining popularity among environmentalists, mechanochemistry induces chemical reactions using basic mechanical energy rather than energy-intensive heat sources.
“Our approach is simple, fast, and uses inexpensive materials,” study co-author Erli Lu said. says the statement.
Lu and his colleagues' first step is to place the sodium metal fragments and Teflon waste in a sealed steel container called a ball mill. Teflon's non-stick and non-reactive properties depend on its extremely strong carbon-fluorine bonds, but a ball mill can break these bonds by grinding them with sodium metal. This breakdown then causes the two ingredients to react chemically at room temperature. The end result? A combination of harmless carbon and sodium fluoride, a stable inorganic salt often used to fluoridate toothpaste and drinking water.
“We used advanced solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy… to look inside the reaction mixture at the atomic level. This allowed us to prove that the process produces pure sodium fluoride without any byproducts,” explained study co-author Dominik Kubicki. “This is a great example of how characterizing advanced materials can accelerate progress towards sustainability.”
This process produces sodium fluoride so pure that it can be used immediately without any additional purification steps. In addition to toothpaste and water, the compound can be used to create other fluoride molecules for pharmaceuticals and medical diagnostic procedures. The team believes their new approach could soon become a roadmap for a circular economy for fluoride production, in which valuable compounds are collected from waste rather than simply thrown away or incinerated.
“We hope this will inspire further work to reuse other types of fluorinated waste and help make the production of vital fluorinated compounds more sustainable,” Lu said.
