Electrochemical Pretreatment of PFAS-Contaminated Aqueous Effluents

Recent research has demonstrated that per- and polyfluorinated alkyl species (PFAS) are highly refractory and bio-accumulative when released to the environment, and have the potential to cause numerous adverse health effects. Development of novel approaches for in situ degradation of PFAS in industrial wastewater and landfill leachate streams would greatly facilitate efforts to prevent discharge of these hazardous materials to the hydrosphere. The electrochemical activity of PFAS has already been shown in the literature, provided that electrodes with sufficiently high water electrolysis overpotentials are used. The proposed Phase II SBIR program would extend the Phase I efforts demonstrating the feasibility of pulsed-waveform electrocatalysis to destroy PFAS efficiently and cost-effectively, by identifying optimized electroreactor operating parameters, developing an improved understanding of process performance on destruction of various PFAS of concern and of the effects of various wastewater/leachate stream constituents (e.g., chloride ion) on the PFAS destruction performance, demonstrating the technology at an alpha-scale, and refining the economic analysis. Numerous governmental and industry stakeholders have an express interest in mitigating PFAS in a variety of contexts, and an electrochemical PFAS destruction technology like that under development is anticipated to find significant market demand from these entities, as supported by the substantial commercialization team assembled for the Phase II program. Currently, the only established method for large-scale PFAS remediation to below the 70 parts-per-trillion EPA lifetime health advisory level is activated carbon adsorption, which is extremely costly and generates a PFAS-contaminated waste stream that must be further treated. The flexibility, scalability, and low cost of the proposed technology are anticipated to be significantly favorable as compared to state-of-the-art methods