Jordan Poler featured on WBTV for PFAS Filter Innovations
Jordan C. Poler, Ph.D., professor of chemistry, was featured as the cover story on WBTV’s “On Your Side Tonight” to discuss his innovations on filtering forever chemicals from water supplies with a purification method he designed.
Poler spoke with reporter Natisha Lance to explain how his innovation, funded last year as one of eight grants statewide from NCInnovation, uses sustainable and low-cost materials to remove contaminants and chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, from water.
The filters can be regenerated nearly indefinitely, which allows for the chemicals to be removed without concentrating them elsewhere by disposing of the filter.
“What you’ve done is you’ve concentrated all the impurities onto that filter and then you put it into the landfill and all those impurities leach back out,” Poler said. Poler’s innovation allows the filter contents to be regenerated and used again. “We can keep on going for hundreds of cycles without any loss in performance so it’s a sustainable solution to a really difficult environmental problem.”
Poler has engaged in this research for eight years and is hoping to be able to bring the sustainable water filter to the market within a year.
“We don’t have to create an environmental problem while we’re trying to solve an environmental problem,” said Poler. “It’s really rewarding working on something that could have a direct impact on people.”