On the 3rd and 4th September the project held two workshops with the title “PFAS remediation in action: sustainable solutions and acceptance conditions” with experts from all around the world as speakers and attendees. Project coordinator Prof. Francesco Dondero from Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale opened the event and let us know his views on current #PFAS challenges: the three knots of detection, impact assessment and remediation.
Prof. Ofer Dahan from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev gave a speech titled “Going beyond conventional detection of PFAS – VMS system” followed by Jamie Dawson from Puraffinity who talked about Puratech, a novel adsorption media for PFAS. Helena Hinrichsen from Envytech Solutions AB just talked Innovative sustainable solution for PFAS remediation – Surface Active Foam Fraction (SAFF) and her colleague Say Svanström presented results coming from the Korsor demo site. Just before the coffee break Christos Aggelopoulos from Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) gave a talk remotely with the title “A promising path for PFAS destruction – Cold Atmospheric Plasma”.
Rick Gillespie from Revive Environmental exposed remotedly about PFAS Destruction via SCWO: Commercial Application for AFFF and Landfill Leachate followed by Brian Pinkard from Aquagga Inc. that presented the Hydrothermal Alkaline Treatment (HALT) for PFAS Destruction. Meng Wang from Enspired Solutions presented “PFASigatorTM: Enspired Solutions’ Photoactived Reductive PFAS Defluorination Technology”. And before the lunch break Natividad Navarro from Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha talked about the impact of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances on soil functioning: developing bio-based remediation strategies.
The second session started with Mihaela Mirea Candea who works at Lomartov presenting the SCENARIOS social acceptance preliminary results, followed by Thomais Vlachogianni from Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development on the challenges and opportunities to reducing PFAS Emissions: The SOS ZEROPOL2030 approach and Insights from Living Labs.
Sidsel Dykjaer from ChemSec talked about navigating market challenges: transitioning away from harmful PM Substances – ZeroPM project and Floris Naus from Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health talked about Dealing with PM(T) substances in the circular economy: Diagnosis, Solutions and co-created Strategies, information gathered from sister project Promisces.
In the afternoon two very interesting panel discussions followed before closing the day.
Panel discussion 1: understanding industry needs. In this panel discussion the moderator was Mihaela Mirea and the panelist were Helena Hinrichsen, Elena Zuriaga from FACSA, (Spain) and David Trueba, from Revive Environmental, (US). The topics they incide were:
📌Perspectives from industry representatives on PFAS remediation
📌Identification of Industry-Specific Challenges and Requirements
Panel discussion 2: regulatory mechanism. In this case Mihaela Mirea acted again as moderator and the panellists were Bente Hyldegård from Zeeland EPA, Alice Caruso from SMA Torino, Jose Luis Aranda Mares from EUROFINS Iproma and Ivan Ivanov from the Bulgarian Water Association.
📌Current policies and regulations regarding PFAS
📌Policymakers’ perspectives on supporting PFAS detection and remediation efforts
During the second day of the workshop and we are heading to the demo site in Korsör we learned about site characterisation modelling as it was explained by Knud Erik Klint from GEO and Nadia Bali from FORTH, then a VMS monitoring vadose zone by Ofer Dahan from BGU finishing with SAFF Remediation explained by our colleagues from Envytech Helena Hinrichsen and Say Svanstrom.
After such interesting conversations we are advancing on the project and are looking forward to the coming up tests and to see how the techniques and proposed solutions matched the predicted performances.
