This week, our SAFF® unit commenced operations in New York State, marking the formal commencement of our PFAS remediation program in the USA.
Within an hour of CDM Smiths technicians connecting the PFAS impacted water supply to our Surface Active Foam Fractionation (SAFF®) plant, this major US industrial site began removing PFAS with just the extraordinary stripping power of air bubbles.
Like many similar sites around the world, this sites groundwater has been impacted by a legacy fire training area which now results in relatively low level (<700 ppt) PFAS contamination making its way into groundwater and eventually to local water courses.
At this site the SAFF is positioned downstream of an air stripper which removes VOC’s. SAFF allows removal of criteria PFAS compounds such as PFOS, PFOA and PFHxS to near undetectable levels.
The SAFF is being trialed to replace an existing ion exchange resin plant which has been struggling to deal with the high levels of heavy metal precipitates which accumulate after the air stripper. SAFF is not affected by high metals, organics or cross contaminant loads and so it’s use dramatically reduces maintenance, waste and consumable requirements whilst still effectively treating PFAS.
Next week we start trials on high PFAS concentration source waters (>9,000 ppt) at the same site.
