PFAS destruction moves water treatment beyond capture
ClarosTechUV™ PFAS Destruction System (image: Claros)
PFAS pollution can persist for decades, contaminate drinking water and expose communities long after its release. Exposure to certain PFAS has been linked to impaired immune responses and increased risks of some cancers, while contamination has prompted multibillion-dollar settlements. Removing these chemicals from water reduces exposure, but often leaves contaminated filters, treatment materials or concentrated liquids that still need to be dealt with.
PFAS destruction breaks down the chemical structure of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, rather than simply separating them from water. Technologies designed to do this aim to complete the treatment process after contaminants have been collected. Some systems already treat waste commercially; others are moving from industrial trials towards permanent installations.
Claros Technologies is making that transition with Daikin America. Following a series of industrial wastewater trials, the companies announced an agreement on 1 October 2026 to install a permanent PFAS destruction system at Daikin’s manufacturing facility in Decatur, Alabama. The planned installation is intended to make destruction part of the factory’s routine water treatment.
Meanwhile the World Economic Forum includes PFAS destruction among its top ten emerging technologies for 2026. Its report points to opportunities for local treatment, while highlighting questions about verification, costs and responsibility for waste. The technology is advancing; its usefulness will depend on matching the treatment to the contamination.
Why PFAS removal leaves contaminated waste
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a large family of manufactured chemicals used in firefighting foams, industrial processes and materials that resist water, oil or heat. Their durability made them useful. Strong carbon–fluorine bonds also make many difficult to break down after release.
PFAS enter the environment through factory emissions, firefighting foams and the use and disposal of products. People can encounter them through contaminated water, food and other routes. Some accumulate in the body.
Filters, specialised resins and membranes can separate PFAS from water, leaving contaminated materials or concentrated liquids requiring further management. Collecting the chemicals from a large volume of water into a smaller waste stream can make intensive destruction treatment more practical. It also means capture and destruction need to be designed as parts of the same process.
The health risks and costs of PFAS pollution
Health risks vary between compounds and depend on exposure. Research on certain PFAS has linked exposure to liver damage as well as immune effects and some cancers. These findings cannot be applied indiscriminately to every substance in this large chemical family, but they support reducing avoidable exposure.
The financial consequences are already substantial. In the United States, 3M’s settlement with public water suppliers, approved in 2024, provides for payments totalling $10.5 billion to $12.5 billion from 2024 to 2036. Separately, Chemours, DuPont and Corteva agreed a $1.185 billion settlement for a defined class of US public water systems. These agreements address specified drinking-water claims; they are not estimates of the total cost of PFAS pollution.
Europe has its own cases. In 2022, 3M agreed a €571 million remediation package with the Flemish authorities addressing contamination around its Zwijndrecht factory in Belgium.
In the Netherlands, a Rotterdam court ruled in an interim judgment in September 2023 that Chemours and its predecessor DuPont were liable for damage suffered by four municipalities from unlawful emissions of PFOA to air between 1 July 1984 and 1 March 1998. PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, is one of the best-studied PFAS. The ruling concerned specific historical emissions and did not establish a final compensation amount.
The consequences extend beyond environmental cleanup. In December 2023, Sweden’s Supreme Court ruled that the elevated PFAS blood levels of more than 150 Ronneby residents, exposed through contaminated drinking water, constituted personal injury under the country’s Product Liability Act. The case concerned the municipal water supplier, and the judgment did not determine the amount of compensation.
These cases put a financial and legal dimension on the treatment problem. Utilities need safe drinking water; manufacturers and governments face the expense of managing contamination that can remain long after its source has disappeared.
How PFAS destruction technologies work
Destruction adds a further step to that work. The approaches below use different processes to break down PFAS, and their performance depends on the waste they receive. They are part of a wider field that also includes thermal treatment and other developing technologies.
Supercritical water oxidation uses water heated and pressurised beyond its critical point. Under these conditions, oxidation reactions can break down difficult contaminants. It offers a route for concentrated waste, although high temperatures and pressures bring demanding maintenance and engineering requirements.
Revive Environmental uses Battelle-developed technology at a Grand Rapids, Michigan facility that began commercial treatment in 2023. It treats PFAS concentrates derived from landfill leachate, the polluted liquid formed when water passes through landfill material.
In its 2023 deployment announcement, the company described treating concentrated waste derived from more than 160,000 US gallons of leachate daily. That figure refers to the source stream, rather than the volume flowing through the destruction reactor: concentration reduces the amount needing intensive treatment.
Electrochemical treatment uses electricity and specialised electrodes to drive destructive reactions. Performance depends on the PFAS mixture and other substances present, including those that could contribute to unwanted reaction products.
AECOM’s DE-FLUORO technology provides an example. A 2020 US Air Force account describes a field demonstration at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, using electrochemical oxidation as the final step in treating PFAS from groundwater near a fire-training area.
Claros takes a light-driven approach. Its ultraviolet (UV) photochemical system uses light as part of a treatment process designed to break down PFAS in water streams.
Claros and Daikin move towards permanent PFAS treatment
At Daikin’s Decatur facility, the permanent Claros system is planned as part of broader improvements over the coming years. In December 2025, Claros had reported treating more than 170,000 US gallons, approximately 640,000 litres, of Daikin’s industrial process water in a commercial optimisation run. It reported greater than 99.99% destruction of targeted PFAS, including long-, short- and ultra-short-chain compounds. The volume indicates work beyond laboratory samples.
The company has also tested the technology in Europe. On 22 September 2026, Claros announced a two-week pilot at pharmaceutical manufacturer Bachem’s campus in Bubendorf, Switzerland. According to Claros, the system met or exceeded Bachem’s performance criteria for trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA, an ultra-short-chain PFAS, under manufacturing conditions. The announcement describes a pilot generating data to inform commercial system design.
How PFAS destruction is verified
A falling concentration of selected PFAS does not, by itself, establish complete breakdown of fluorinated contamination. Chemicals may have been separated from the sampled water, transformed into other fluorinated compounds or broken down more extensively.
Verification therefore needs to examine what enters and leaves the treatment process. Measurements of residual PFAS and fluorinated breakdown products, together with inorganic fluoride released as carbon–fluorine bonds break, help establish what happened. A fluorine mass balance attempts to account for that fluorine across the process.
Targeted tests remain useful, but measure a defined list of chemicals. They cannot alone provide a complete account of every fluorinated substance present. Nor does a result below a test’s detection limit establish that nothing remains.
The Daikin announcement says treatment will be combined with continuous analytical testing through ClarosLabs, Claros’s own analytical division. That creates a provision for ongoing monitoring. Independent validation and publicly available operating data would provide customers and regulators with additional assurance. EPA’s 2026 interim guidance likewise encourages developers of new treatment technologies to release data that can be reviewed.
What determines PFAS treatment costs
Verification also belongs in the treatment budget. Destruction equipment is only one part of the cost. Customers also need to consider electricity, reagents, maintenance, pretreatment, concentration and management of remaining waste.
Treating waste on site could reduce transport and dependence on external disposal facilities. Those savings must be weighed against the cost of running and monitoring the system. A large cumulative treatment volume reveals little about sustained throughput, downtime or expenditure per unit treated.
The WEF report also highlights responsibility for contamination. Customers and treatment providers need clarity about who remains accountable if waste is incompletely treated. Demonstrating performance and allocating that responsibility are both necessary for a dependable commercial service.
PFAS cleanup and continued production
Daikin manufactures fluorochemicals while investing in technology to destroy PFAS in its process water. The October announcement explicitly presents treatment as supporting continued use in applications including semiconductors and medical devices.
Effective treatment could reduce releases from controlled industrial streams. It cannot automatically account for chemicals leaving a factory in products, or recover pollution already dispersed through soil and groundwater. Cleaning an aquifer first requires finding and collecting contamination, potentially over many years.
The WEF report raises the possibility that destruction capability could influence arguments over PFAS restrictions. The policy question is how much confidence treatment of a defined waste stream should provide about continued production when other routes of release remain.
Destruction could give utilities and manufacturers a more durable destination for collected PFAS. For a factory or utility, the immediate test is whether it can treat a defined waste stream reliably and at an acceptable cost. For communities living with legacy pollution, collection and cleanup remain a longer task. Progress in the reactor can improve that work, but preventing further releases remains essential.
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