Tribo-Reactor for fluorine circularity by urban mining

Introduction

TriFluorium largely expands current circular economy capabilities for highly stable organofluoride waste (PFAS, including fluoropolymers) and provides safe, sustainable, and efficient regeneration of fluorine into safe, stable inorganic fluorides as industrial resources, such as fluorspar. Fluoropolymers are indispensable for many critical (e.g., semiconductors) and green (e.g., hydrogen production, fuel cells, EVs) applications, and their disposal options are very limited.

Resource Challenges

The needed fluorspar resource is listed as the EU’s critical raw material and is acquired outside of the EU, with a recycling rate at 1% due to the lack of proper technologies.

Project Goals

TriFluorium wants to achieve proof of the tribolysis recycling principle for organofluorides (TRL 3) irrespective of particular chemical structure, molecular weight, or liquid/solid form under a properly designed controllable tribocontact site, which promotes chemical reactions initiated by mechanical stimuli.

Process Description

Tribolysis shall, within one processing step, generate local dense-energy spots to initiate decomposition of very stable organofluorides, including the perfluorinated ones, and to activate safe reactants, such as alkaline earth metal (Group II) salts or oxides to efficiently convert organofluorides into safe, stable inorganic products (mineralization).

Development of Tribo-Reactor

TriFluorium will also develop a dedicated Tribo-Reactor for laboratory scale validation of tribolysis F-recycling (TRL 4) for process scaling and enhancement of tribolysis technology development towards industrial application. The locally initiated reactions with benign reactants have inherently safe operational and energy-efficiency features.

Assessment and Evaluation

Supporting toxicological and LCA assessments will be carried out to comprehensively evaluate the tribolysis recycling process and Tribo-Reactor performance from all relevant perspectives.

Conclusion

The foundation of tribolysis recycling for organofluorides answers urgent technological needs and contributes to current environmental, economic, and social goals.