The Water Research Foundation has been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to perform research on poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Administered through the DoD's Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, the project is titled “Evaluation and Life Cycle Comparison of Ex-Situ Treatment Technologies for Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances in Groundwater.”
This project will develop a framework for assessing PFAS treatment techniques from a life cycle cost/assessment perspective, which will be structured based on input gathered during an expert workshop.
“Previous WRF research found that conventional treatment is ineffective at removing PFAS from water,” says John Albert, chief research officer for The Water Research Foundation. “This research will help fill knowledge gaps by evaluating traditional and developing treatment technologies for PFAS.”
In addition to creating the framework, the project team will develop a treatment testing protocol and conduct laboratory-scale studies to evaluate the performance of various technologies for PFAS removal under different treatment scenarios.
The results will be used to develop an Excel-based decision support tool to help DoD, utilities and other practitioners select the most viable treatment technologies for different scenarios on a life cycle cost/assessment basis by identifying advantages, disadvantages, limitations and costs of the various technologies.
The research team is comprised of The Water Research Foundation, Colorado School of Mines (Chris Bellona and Chris Higgins), North Carolina State University (Detlef Knappe), University of Colorado Boulder (Sherri Cook) and CDM Smith (Charles Schaefer). The total project budget is $1,090,451.
For more information about the PFAS award, contact Kenan Ozekin at kozekin@waterrf.org or 303-734-3464.
