The Problem with PFAS Waste Incineration

This article, written by Maureen Dooley, VP – Industrial Sector of REGENESIS – and published in Environmental Science & Engineering magazine, discusses the problem of PFAS waste incineration.

In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released a memo placing a moratorium on the incineration of materials containing PFAS. The DOD’s incineration ban highlights the critical problem that PFAS-impacted facilities must grapple with when managing waste streams as: “No commercially available disposal or incineration methods have proven effective at preventing the ‘forever chemicals’ from being recycled back into the environment.”

Besides avoiding the creation and disposal of wastes whose ultimate fate cannot be assured, the use of the colloidal activated carbon technology to contain PFAS in place also avoids many of the financial and environmental costs of installing, operating and maintaining these pump-and-treat systems.