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How innovative technologies are fighting PFAS in water systems

How innovative technologies are fighting PFAS in water systems

 


Clean freshwater is one of our most precious natural resources, especially in the arid West. What if there was a blue bottle that could be used to recycle polluted industrial wastewater into clean drinking water? Large-scale recovery and treatment of wastewater for reuse in drinking water, irrigation and industry. That will benefit the municipal water supply. New technologies have the potential to make water recycling safer and more cost-effective.

There is a lot of talk these days surrounding perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). A growing concern stems from the fact that PFAS are so ubiquitous, dangerous, and prone to persistence in the environment that they are called eternal chemicals. PFAS can be harmful to human health and have been linked to various cancers, hormonal disruptions, weakened immune systems and reproductive problems. Perpetual chemicals also harm the environment, especially aquatic ecosystems downstream of industrial and wastewater treatment plants.

Accelerating PFAS regulations

PFAS do not degrade spontaneously and the carbon-fluorine (CF) bond, the strongest bond in organic chemistry, is very fragile. This class of chemicals is so resistant to grease, water, and oil that it is used in everything from cookware to cosmetics to firefighting foams. They are so useful that over 9,200 of his PFAS compounds have been created since their introduction in the 1940s. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates at least 40 of her PFASs, but regulations are rapidly expanding at the federal level as well as the state level.

EPA recently released the Wastewater Guidelines Program Plan 15 (Plan 15). It works to protect the nation’s waterways by developing technology-based pollution limits and research on wastewater discharge from industrial sources, in accordance with the Science and Clean Water Act. The EPA plans to revise the Effluent Restriction Guidelines and Pretreatment Standards (ELGs) to reduce PFAS in leachate from landfills. The agency also released a new study involving one of industrial effluents to publicly owned treatment plants (POTWs) to inform the development and implementation of pretreatment programs to combat PFAS. These actions are essential to follow the path set by the EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap and develop best practices for ensuring safe and scalable water recycling.

State Supports Water Recycling

Support for water recycling is growing at the state level. The Alliance for Water Efficiencys 2022 State Policy Scorecard for Water Efficiency and Sustainability reported that 14 states have both water use regulation and funding to support reuse projects. California tops the water reuse rankings with initiatives such as Proposition 1, which funded her $625 million in reclaimed water projects. In the rankings, Texas was her second and Arizona was her third. A further 15 states had recycling regulations without funding.

These trends are becoming increasingly important due to climate change. The Alliance for Water Efficiency says nearly every state will experience drought in her 2022.

Challenges of PFAS Wastewater treatment

Municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) face intense scrutiny as they are a major source of PFAS contamination. For example, one study identified his WWTP effluents as a major source of PFAS discharged into Lake Ontario, and found his WWTPs in eight cities discharging PFAS-laden effluents into the San Francisco Bay. Consider another study.

PFAS enter wastewater treatment plants from three main sources. Consumer products, industrial effluents, and landfill leachates that go down drains. The problem is that conventional wastewater treatment technology only breaks down long-chain PFAS compounds into smaller-chain compounds that are released into the resulting sludge or wastewater.

These short-chain PFASs may be the reason why higher concentrations of PFASs are often measured in wastewater effluents and sludges than in influents. For example, a paper published in Water Solutions in 2020 reported the results of a study that tested 17 of his PFAS compounds at his four wastewater treatment plants in the United States. Sludge was 0.0180.049 ppm (parts per million) before treatment and 0.0080.123 ppm after heat treatment or composting. Sludge incinerators operate at temperatures of 800-900°C, but temperatures above 1,000°C are required to destroy PFAS.

PFAS in treated sludge and wastewater adversely affect watersheds. An analysis of US drinking water found a strong correlation between the number of wastewater treatment plants in a watershed and PFAS concentrations in public water supplies. Higher concentrations of PFAS can reduce the ability to safely reuse water for drinking and irrigation. Research should be conducted to determine if the concentration of PFAS in wastewater is safe.

repair is not enough

PFAS repair is still in its early stages. Most commercially available HIS PFAS tests detect less than 40 HIS PFAS compounds, and especially because of the growing demand for a class-based approach to HIS PFAS management, test development seems to be lagging behind the growing list of EPA recently published a proposed method for Adsorbent Organic Fluorines (AOF) that analyzes PFAS as a class. While such a class-based approach has many possibilities, AOF has some drawbacks. It has low sensitivity, does not provide compound-specific information, and is biased toward long-chain compounds.

After PFAS have been identified, there are various separation techniques that can be applied to the wastewater. Reverse osmosis, foam fractionation, ionic resins, and granular activated carbon are the most common methods used to filter PFAS. However, these methods have difficulty capturing short-chain PFASs, especially in complex wastewaters containing high concentrations of other organic compounds and competing ions.

Waste from these separation technologies, including spent filter media and liquid PFAS concentrates, are sent to landfills or incinerated. PFAS are not destroyed, but the compounds migrate to other environmental matrices. Incineration has been found to degrade long-chain PFASs into short-chain fluorinated molecules, which are dispersed in the environment by ash and smoke. The US Department of Defense recently banned incineration as a method of disposing of PFAS, and some states are following suit.

Limited landfill and incineration options available, combined with recontamination issues, are becoming increasingly costly, and waste generators may still face significant liability risks. there is.

where innovation flows

Innovative technology has the potential to permanently destroy PFAS.

The first step is testing using both compound-specific methods and class-based methods such as AOF and total organic fluorine (TOF). This detailed analysis is used to design highly customized remediation strategies.

The second step is the capture and concentration of PFAS using new proprietary chemistries and methods that have proven to be more efficient and effective. They can be used alone or in combination with existing scavenging systems such as ionic resins and foam fractionation, paving the way for widespread adoption. Reducing millions of gallons of wastewater to just a few gallons of his PFAS concentrate makes destruction much more manageable and affordable.

The final step is the permanent destruction of PFAS by defluorination.

Water recycling is one of the nation’s best hopes for maintaining access to reliable and safe water sources for communities across the country. Water resilience is becoming increasingly important as climate change is projected to threaten water availability and quality. A new technology that provides robust testing, recovery, concentration and permanent destruction of PFAS allows recycled wastewater to be safely used for drinking, irrigation and watershed restoration without harming human or environmental health. Trust can be instilled.

John Brockgreitens holds a Ph.D. He holds a PhD in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Minnesota and his expertise includes the development and application of nanomaterials in environmental systems. John is Director of Research and Development at Claros Technologies, a company that provides testing, recovery, and destruction technologies for PFAS, heavy metals, and mercury contaminants.

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