The Environmental Matrix Effects of Inorganic Ions to Photo-Reductive Defluorination of Perfluorooctanoic Acid

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), has prompted much concern in the last fifty years. Its accumulation in the natural environment is increased, and its threats to ecosystems have been discovered. Because of the highly stable, PFOA was hardly decomposed and defluorination. In previous study, a photo-reduction method is developed for the decomposition of PFOA in Milli-Q water with potassium iodide (KI) as a mediator. But this system wasn't discussed in natural environment. In this study, several common inorganic ions in the surface water were been choice as the object. By analyzing the matrix effects of different kinds of anions and cations to the photo-reductive defluorination of PFOA, it shows that the presence of anions in the system will heavily inhibit the degradation process, while the impact of cations to the degradation is related to the concentration. And, both anions and cations can inhibit the defluorination process, but anions have much greater impact than the cations to the defluorination rate.