Aclarity destroys PFAS chemicals in mobile pilot

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) destruction technology company Aclarity, Hadley, Massachusetts, has announced that it has successfully destroyed PFAS chemicals at a customer’s site, at volume, in landfill leachate.

The company says its full-scale pilot—sponsored by Washington, D.C.-based water technology company Xylem—demonstrates that PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, can be destroyed at full-scale capacity for large operations. Aclarity claims that the modular nature of its technology allows for destruction of low volume streams and even those requiring upwards of millions of gallons per day to be treated.

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Third party lab results using standard American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) method D7979 confirmed Aclarity destroyed PFAS compounds in landfill leachate continuously at a centralized waste treatment facility at levels of greater than 1,000 nanograms per liter (ng/L) to below 10 ng/L, the company says. The equipment operated continuously for four weeks while using little energy.

“Electrochemical destruction is a leading candidate for degrading PFAS from water into harmless byproducts including carbon dioxide and fluoride ions,” says Dr. Mahmut S. Ersan, assistant research professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. “In our laboratory testing, the destruction efficiency seen in Aclarity’s electrochemical destruction pilot unit was excellent and is a notable advancement.”

Aclarity says these results offer a pathway forward to ridding the world of forever chemicals and come at a time when the U.S. EPA is proposing to designate perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) as hazardous substances under the superfund act (CERCLA), which would require PFAS disposal or on-site treatment at landfills, more than tripling operating costs for operators. As this ruling moves forward, Aclarity says its system provides landfill operators and centralized waste treatment facilities with a cost-effective tool to comply and save the environment.

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“Existing methods for managing PFAS in landfill leachate merely transfer the chemicals within our environment,” Aclarity CEO Julie Bliss Mullen says. “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.”

Currently, combating PFAS in landfills across the U.S. with mobile trailers, Aclarity says it is 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.