Aclarity, a leading PFAS destruction technology company, has successfully destroyed PFAS chemicals at a customer’s site, at volume, in landfill leachate; a primary source of PFAS contamination in the environment.
The full-scale pilot, sponsored by Xylem, a leading water technology company, demonstrates that PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals,” a class of highly toxic and ubiquitous substances previously resistant to any form of degradation, can be destroyed at full-scale capacity for large operations. The modular nature of the Aclarity technology allows for destruction of low volume streams and even those requiring upwards of millions of gallons per day to be treated.
Until now, PFAS destruction technologies have been relegated to the laboratory, or to batched processing. Yet most wastewater treatment processes need a continual-flow solution – a batch process would interrupt facility operations. Aclarity’s full scale reactors can continuously destroy PFAS at a rate that matches the customer’s purification train.
“Electrochemical destruction is a leading candidate for degrading PFAS from water into harmless by-products including carbon dioxide and fluoride ions. In our laboratory testing, the destruction efficiency seen in Aclarity’s electrochemical destruction pilot unit was excellent and is a notable advancement,” said Dr. Mahmut S. Ersan, an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering, and the Built Environment at Arizona State University.
These results offer a pathway forward to ridding the world of dangerous, cancer-causing forever chemicals. They come at a time when the US EPA is proposing to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under CERCLA (the Superfund act), which would require PFAS disposal or on-site treatment at landfills, more than tripling operating costs for operators. As this ruling moves forward, Aclarity’s system provides landfill operators and centralized waste treatment facilities with a cost-effective tool to comply and save the environment.
“Existing methods for managing PFAS in landfill leachate merely transfer the chemicals within our environment,” said Julie Bliss Mullen, CEO of the venture-backed, woman owned and founded water technology company. “By proving scalability and leading unit economics, our customers now have a feasible solution to destroy PFAS forever, reducing environmental impact, liability, costs and operations while increasing capacity and public health.”
The company is currently planning several permanent installations in 2023 and is working to evaluate complementary concentration technology providers to expand into verticals such as drinking water and groundwater remediation.
