Magnesium reagent recycles C–F bonds from PTFE

Abstract

A magnesium complex can remove fluorine atoms from solid microparticles of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) at room temperature and then donate the fluorine atoms to other compounds ( J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c02526 ). “I haven’t seen any previous report describing this kind of work, especially at room temperature, that directly cuts the fluorine off the PTFE polymer solid,” says Jinyong Liu, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the research. The researchers hope this proof-of-concept experiment will inspire others to try harvesting fluorine from waste PTFE and other fluoropolymers, says Mark R. Crimmin, a chemist at Imperial College London. Fluoropolymers are produced in huge volumes every year. Their strong carbon-fluorine bonds make them useful, but they are also highly persistent, contributing to the problem of accumulating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) . In 2011, while Crimmin and graduate student Daniel J. Sheldon