A Clarkson University team led by Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Yang Yang (Principal Investigator), Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Environmental Engineering Michelle Crimi, Jean S. Newell Distinguished Professor of Engineering Thomas Holsen, and Research Assistant Professor Juby Varghese have been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Defense, Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (DoD-ESTCP) to scale up an integrated treatment system to destroy PFAS in sediments.
The treatment system includes mechanochemical ball milling, which destroys PFAS in soils and sediments, followed by soil washing, which removes any remaining PFAS from soils and sediments, and plasma treatment, which destroys PFAS in wash solution. The Clarkson team will lead the treatability studies, the process optimization, and the scaled-up design of ball milling, followed by soil washing, and plasma treatment to eliminate PFAS in multiple environmental media involved in contaminated solids remediation. The Clarkson team, in collaboration with GSI Environmental, Inc., will deploy the system at Schreiver Air Force Base, Colorado.
“Clarkson has an amazing team of faculty with complementary expertise on PFAS detection and destruction. In this project, all the technologies were developed at Clarkson and will be scaled up by Clarkson. It is rewarding to be able to turn ideas in the lab into real-world solutions.” said Yang.
The Clarkson team will coordinate with a group from the Colorado School of Mines to carry out field tests in Schreiver Air Force Base during the same period. The Mines team will evaluate treatment approaches different from Clarkson’s technologies. Side-by-side testing at Schriever will start next fall and last about a year.
“The PFAS load in soils and sediments impacted by AFFF is immense and, if left untreated, will lead to significant long-term liabilities for downstream groundwater users,” said Chris Higgins, University Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Mines and lead principal investigator for the Mines-led project. “We’re excited to see how these technologies perform in a real-world scenario, based on a side-by-side comparison.”