Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) have been used in various industries such as food packaging materials and waterproof coating agents due to characteristics such as waterproofing and heat dissipation. Since the 2000s, many studies have been conducted as continuous exposure to PFAS is known to have adverse effects on human health such as liver toxicity and hormonal disturbance. In particular, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), one of the types of PFAS, has great resistance to biological and chemical decomposition, which can threaten the health of the aquatic ecosystem while staying for a long time in the environment. Accordingly, although treatment is urgent, it has been confirmed that the existing biological and physicochemical treatment has limitations in treatment.
Therefore, this study conducted a study on PFOS decomposition by applying a low-temperature plasma process, one of the highly oxidized processes. When CP was applied, 62.5% of PFOS was decomposed after 1 hr exposure, and the degradation rate constant was confirmed to be 3.1hr-1. The reason why PFOS could be efficiently decomposed in a short time was because of the hydroxyl radicals (?OH) formation rate of CP. The instantaneous generation rate of ?OH was measured to be 5.2 x 10-5 mol/s. Sulfate (SO42-) and fluoride (F-) were detected in the solution, which proves that PFOS was effectively decomposed. In addition, there is little difference between the measured F- concentration and the estimated F- concentration, so the mass balance is confirmed after degradation. The results of the acute toxicity test on by-products resulting from additional PFOS decomposition confirmed that the intermediate decomposition product of PFOS produced during CP exposure was up to 1.78 times higher than the original PFOS but could be alleviated through additional CP exposure. In addition, economic evaluation was conducted by calculating the amount of electrical energy consumption for the CP process. These results suggest that CP is likely to be an economical processing option to respond to environmental threats that may be caused by PFOS.