Author: Katie Mann, Marketing & Communications Director

PFAS is a man-made chemical that helps make pans non-stick, firefighter’s foam extinguish, and textiles waterproof. PFAS’ carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest chemical bonds known, which can become a problem, resisting breakdown such that they accumulate in the environment as dangerous “forever chemicals” and leach into our communities – from landfills for example. PFAS is found in up to 45% of US drinking water and is toxic and harmful to humans and the environment.

Allonnia is on a mission to remove PFAS from contaminated water across a wide range of site conditions. We deploy a naturally elegant solution called SAFF^®, Surface Active Foam Fractionation. Manufactured by EPOC Enviro, SAFF is a precisely engineered, patent-pending system that separates PFAS molecules from contaminated water sources, transforming them into a destruction-ready, hyper-concentrate using just air.

Versus alternative removal techniques that employ mechanical or chemical means, SAFF capitalizes on a natural physicochemical trait to separate and concentrate PFAS. The molecules are simultaneously hydrophilic and hydrophobic, naturally adhering to a gas/liquid interface, and so they are especially attracted to the surface of air bubbles. SAFF generates millions of rising air bubbles that attract the PFAS compounds and separate them from the contaminated water that is pumped through a network of highly specialized fractionation tanks inside a purpose-built transportable container.

SAFF’s completely natural process provides numerous operating advantages:

1. SAFF has one of the lowest operating costs of any PFAS treatment system available. The plug-and-play design can be set up within a few hours onsite, requiring just a power supply and connection.
2. SAFF requires zero adsorption media to capture PFAS. Instead, millions of bubbles, drawn from the surrounding air, attract, separate and hyper concentrate PFAS molecules into a tank, ready for destruction.
3. SAFF outputs a concentrated PFAS fractionate that is destruction-ready and can be paired with many commercially available destruction technologies.
4. SAFF is engineered for sustainability, protecting the environment by consuming minimal energy and producing no waste other than PFAS hyper-concentrate.
5. SAFF is highly effective at PFAS removal, separating and concentrating >99.999% of ≥C6 and most short chain PFAS chemistries from a wide range of site contamination scenarios.
6. SAFF is hyper concentrating, extracting a single gallon of PFAS concentrate from one million gallons of groundwater, yielding clean water that can be released to the environment or qualified disposal receptors.
7. SAFF provides regulatory compliance that meets or exceeds the most stringent state PFAS regulations.
8. SAFF is effective across a full spectrum of short-chain PFAS compounds and performance can be enhanced with a dosing of Allonnia’s booster that facilitates increased aggregation, and subsequent separation.
9. SAFF has been proven to be highly versatile, successfully treating hundreds of millions of gallons of PFAS-contaminated water across varied applications including landfill leachate, groundwater and process water – often without pre-treatment.
10. SAFF is a containerized solution that can be wheeled on site with a weatherized design that enables year-round operation without the need for permanent structures.
11. SAFF is made in the USA by our partner, EPOC Enviro, operating from a manufacturing facility in North Carolina, so we can deliver SAFF units swiftly and conveniently throughout North America.
12. SAFF provides 24/7 real-time, worldwide monitoring ensuring continual oversight and intervention as needed.

To date, Allonnia has successfully deployed and helps operate SAFF units across more than a dozen sites from California to Massachusetts.

Interested in the benefits SAFF can bring to removing PFAS at your site? Receive a free technical evaluation of SAFF’s effectiveness for your site conditions