SOLVIA PFAS Control is a line of work on persistent fluoroorganic compounds: the reduction, concentration and removal of PFAS from water, wastewater and concentrates, and the treatment of surfaces and equipment that have been in contact with contaminated media.
PFAS are a group of persistent fluoroorganic compounds found in industrial effluent, in leachate, in contaminated water, in firefighting foams, in process washings, in sludge and on the surfaces of equipment. Standard schemes built for organics, suspended solids, iron, hardness or domestic sewage do not always give the required result: these compounds are poorly destroyed by ordinary treatment methods and persist in the aquatic environment.
The SOLVIA PFAS Control line of work gathers engineering solutions for reducing, concentrating, removing and then treating such contamination in water, in wastewater, in concentrates and on contaminated surfaces. The scheme is built not around a single universal method but from blocks selected for the task: sorption, ion exchange, carbon materials and functional sorbents, membrane concentration, electrochemical treatment of concentrates, polishing, water quality control and cleaning formulations for equipment.
PFAS are not treated as ordinary contamination. Suspended solids, organics, iron and hardness are removed by mechanical filtration, biological treatment, coagulation, oxidation or standard sorption; the fluoroorganic compounds of this group are persistent, resist biological degradation and remain in the aquatic environment. A scheme assembled for the familiar contaminants does not always give the required result with them.
Different PFAS behave differently: some sorb better, others are harder to retain, part passes through ordinary filters and part concentrates in separate streams. Hence the order of the work: first it is established which stream is contaminated, at what concentration and what accompanying contamination the water carries, and only then is a treatment scheme assembled rather than a single filter chosen.
A practical sequence starts with the accompanying contamination that interferes with the main stage. Ahead of the PFAS block, mechanical filtration, the removal of suspended solids, a reduction of the organic load, pH correction, the removal of oil products and surfactants, preliminary sorption or membrane preparation may be needed. The main removal method is selected after that: a sorption block, an ion exchange stage, a carbon material, a functional sorbent or a combined scheme.
Sorption is a practically applicable direction for reducing PFAS in water, yet an ordinary sorbent is not always equally effective for different groups of compounds and different types of water. The result is affected by chain length, accompanying organics, salts, pH, competing contamination, the water flow, the contact time, the type of sorbent, mass transfer, the regeneration or the disposal of the spent material. Functional sorption materials for binding PFAS in water streams are under consideration as an in-house development.
Ion exchange materials take particular ionic contaminants out of the water and for part of the tasks become a separate stage of the scheme. Membrane separation works differently: the system separates the treated stream from a concentrate in which the contaminants remain in a smaller volume but at a higher concentration. In engineering terms this is convenient, because a concentrated stream is easier to send to separate treatment.
Concentration does not finish the work but changes its subject: the spent sorbent or resin remains, and so does the concentrate itself. Electrochemical methods for difficult effluent and concentrates are developed as a separate line and are considered as part of the scheme where the work is done with a smaller volume of concentrate — anodic treatment, electrochemical oxidation, sorption after electrochemistry, pH and redox potential control, carbon polishing. There is no universal scheme for fluoroorganic contaminants, and the composition of every stream is assessed beforehand.
On operating sites a full replacement of the treatment system is often impossible, and the practical solution is a separate PFAS module connected to the existing scheme as an additional stage. The connection point is chosen by the place of the task: after mechanical or biological treatment, after a membrane stage, on a side stream, on the concentrate, on the backwash water, before discharge or before water reuse.
Such a retrofit closes a particular problem without rebuilding the whole plant. For an industrial site the search for the sources of contamination inside production is added to it, and not the treatment of the final discharge alone: detection and separation of the problem stream stand in the scheme ahead of the removal stage. Sites differ in the composition of the contamination and in the requirements to the result, and a pilot test remains the step from a laboratory assessment to a working scheme.
PFAS are retained on equipment, materials, vessels, pipelines, tools, protective items, packaging and on areas that have been in contact with a contaminated medium. Ordinary detergents are not always effective enough: the compounds of this group have particular surface-active properties and hold firmly on materials. The cleaning formulation under development is aimed at improving the separation of the contamination from the surface and moving it into a controlled washing.
After washing the contamination does not disappear: it passes into the washing water, which is collected and treated as a PFAS-bearing stream. The formulation is therefore applied not on its own but together with a technology for collecting and treating that water — washing the surface, collecting the washing water, sorption or membrane concentration, treatment of the concentrate and control of the residual contamination.
SOLVIA PFAS Control brings together several in-house developments in the treatment of water, effluent, concentrates and surfaces for PFAS: sorption solutions, retrofit modules, the electrochemical treatment of concentrates and a dedicated cleaning formulation. Particular solutions are aimed at international markets, including the United States and Canada. The technical solutions are developed within the developer's patent strategy; the compositions, the formulations, the functional components, the treatment regimes and the parameters of the materials are not disclosed in open materials.
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