Existing remediation solutions for soils impacted with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) face practical challenges. Incineration and expensive dig and haul disposal operations fail to eliminate long-term environmental liabilities. Similarly, many destruction-based solutions under development likely require excessive energy input which would challenge cost-effectiveness and sustainability. Further, remedial investigation data indicates that areas impacted by PFAS vary by orders of magnitude within a site. Static treatment processes are thus inherently non-optimized and may either under- or over-treat, yielding either ineffective results or wasted resources. Therefore, the variability of soil constituents and chemical levels across a project site requires a dynamic treatment solution optimized in real-time based upon that variability.

The objective of this project is to demonstrate PFAS destruction via a real-time optimized chemo-kinematic process that yields non-toxic outputs at commercially viable scale. Specific technical objectives include:

• Demonstrate chemo-kinematic PFAS destruction in soil to EPA Regional Screening Levels for Residential/Industrial soil at a throughput that substantiates commercial viability and operational feasibility.
• Demonstrate the ability to optimize the treatment process in near real-time under field conditions.
• Validate the commercial viability of energy and additive costs.
• Evaluate treated soil for safety and operational utility (e.g., on-site reuses).

Remedy Scientific’s PFAS Soil Remediation System is built around ambient temperature and pressure ball milling, augmented with advanced sensors and a machine learning algorithm to optimize both the chemistry (non-toxic additives and co-additives) and kinematics (dwell time, reactor type, operating frequency or revolutions per minute, ball charge configuration, etc.) within the treatment process to destroy PFAS at a commercially viable scale based upon real-time sensed soil constituents and chemical levels as soil is ingested into the system. This chemo-kinematic optimization provides pathways for overcoming previous barriers to commercial scaling of ball milling technology for PFAS destruction.

This modular, containerized solution can be produced in quantities required to remediate multiple project sites simultaneously, tailoring the number of units for each site based upon the amount of soil to be treated and the varying PFAS chemical levels. Automated material handling and remote monitoring reduce on-site labor requirements, enabling operation of multiple units simultaneously and multiplying the cost-effectiveness of the solution. Because the system requires no fixed infrastructure and adapts to site-specific conditions, it is expected that this solution can economically address the majority of sites with PFAS-impacted soil, regardless of location, PFAS concentration, and soil type. Successful results from this work will provide an improved capability to cost-effectively characterize, remediate, and manage soil and waters impacted by chemicals of concern. (Anticipated Completion Date - 2028)