Scientific paper on soil remediation of PFAS
A fourth paper with co-authors from Eurofins (Patrick van Hees and Patrik Karlsson) in collaboration with researchers at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) has now been published. As before, focal point is cleanup technology for PFAS and the research has been part of LTU's now completed TUFFO project "Validation of treatment techniques for PFAS contaminated materials". The title of the article is “Combination of separation and degradation methods after PFAS soil washing” and it is included in the journal Science of the Total Environment (link below).
In the study a three-stage process was employed to clean PFAS contaminated soil, soil washing followed by foam fractionation (FF) of the leachate and electrochemical oxidation (EO) (alt. adsorption) of the foam concentrate. The soils were dominated by PFOS (19-760 µg/kg DM) and it was shown that up to 95% of the content could be removed. Tests were performed in both lab and pilot scale (60kg). Initial experiments demonstrated that a high L/S (liquid to solid) ratio (40) and pH (11.5) were favourable. FF could separate 95-99% of the PFOS in the leachate, which then could be re-used for washing. EO or adsorption could subsequently remove up to 97% of the PFOS. Overall shorter PFAS posed a bigger challenge but still good cleaning results with respect to the original soil were found.
Eurofins would also like to congratulate the first author, Jean Noel Uwayezu, to a successful defense of his thesis on 31 Oct and wishes the best of luck with the new post-doc position at LTU. We look forward to continued collaboration. Questions about our PFAS work can be answered by Patrick van Hees (e-mail: patrickvanhees@eurofins.se)