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Abstracts
 

“Hydrothermal Alkaline Treatment for a Closed-Loop, On-Site PFAS Treatment Solution” by Dr. Brian Pinkard (ER23-8400)

Hydrothermal alkaline treatment (HALT) is a PFAS destruction process that leverages high pH conditions to destroy PFAS in liquid feedstocks. This project demonstrated HALT for the centralized disposal of several PFAS-rich liquid wastes produced during DoW site remediation efforts. PFAS destruction performance was measured and assessed for a range of operating conditions, leveraging many different analytical techniques to track the fate of fluorine and extent of PFAS destruction. Additionally, a legacy aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) blend was processed on-site with HALT. This presentation will briefly describe the fundamentals of the HALT technology, share insights from the demonstration, and discuss best practices for integration within an effective treatment train for facilitating complete PFAS capture and destruction.

“The Use of Supercritical Water Oxidation for Environmental Remediation and Restoration from PFAS” By Mr. John Follin (ER23-8434)

Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) is an innovative technology that has been previously demonstrated for the destruction of energetics (explosives and propellants) and other organic wastes. This presentation will focus on recent tests that have been performed using this technology for PFAS destruction at a Clean Earth facility in Charlotte, North Carolina and at General Atomics’ test facility in San Diego, California. At the Charlotte facility, a mobile system was used to process and destroy three PFAS-laden waste streams provided by Allonnia, ECT2, and Cyclopure, as well as an AFFF concentrate. In San Diego, spent granulated activated carbon and ion-exchange resin beads were tested using a commercial SCWO system. This presentation will summarize the procedures, PFAS test results, and stack gas testing.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Brian Pinkard is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Aquagga, a PFAS destruction startup based in Tacoma, Washington. Aquagga is commercializing the HALT technology, which was first developed at the Colorado School of Mines under SERDP Project ER18-1501. Since 2016, Brian has been working to develop and advance hydrothermal processing technologies for waste disposal applications, including extensive research on HALT and SCWO. Brian has served as the principal or co-principal investigator of projects funded by SERDP and ESTCP, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Air Force, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania and master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington, where he currently serves as an Affiliate Assistant Professor.

Mr. John Follin has been with General Atomics for 46 years. He currently serves as Director of Strategic Development for weapons destruction programs and for organic destruction using SCWO. John has experience with nuclear engineering and nuclear physics and has led the development of a wide variety of products for both the defense and the commercial arena. He started working with supercritical technologies in the mid-1990’s for defense related projects and has been developing systems for commercial organic waste destruction applications since 2013. Starting in 2021, John has been involved with the destruction of PFAS materials and other organic waste for both industry and government applications. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.