Our waterways are becoming more and more polluted due to PFAS, plastics, medicines, drugs, and new chemicals made by companies that just hand over the responsibility of cleaning to plants paid for by public moneys. Detecting the different chemicals and filtering them out if getting harder and harder. Could the simple solution of heating up past a point where even PFAS/forever chemicals decomposes (400C for PFAS, 500C to be more sure about other stuff) be alright?

  • atro_cityOP
    1•7 days ago

    Can the degraded chemicals withstand sustained exposure to 500C?

    • AwesomeLowlander
      1•7 days ago

      The chemicals don’t just disappear, whatever they’ve degraded into will still remain.

        • AwesomeLowlander
          2•6 days ago

          At this point I think we’ve figured out that all chemicals should be considered harmful unless we have specifically tested and concluded otherwise.

            • @Alloi@lemmy.world
              1•5 days ago

              pesticides, pharmeceuticals, PFAS or forever chemicals. all can be made much worse by boiling at over 500c, just forna few examples.

              • atro_cityOP
                1•2 days ago

                For PFAS that definitely isn’t true

                In the new EPA study, experts added oxidizing substances to water contaminated with PFASs and heated the liquid above its critical temperature of 374 degrees Celsius at a pressure of more than 220 bars. During this process, the water becomes what is called supercritical: it is neither a gas nor a liquid. In this state, even water-repellent substances such as PFASs dissolve much more readily, and at the same time, the state accelerates chemical reactions.