Allonnia and OPEC Systems Announce North American Distribution Agreement for Surface Active Foam Fractionation® (SAFF®)

Allonnia and OPEC Systems Announce North American Distribution Agreement for Surface Active Foam Fractionation® (SAFF®)


Boston, MA – March 31, 2022 – Allonnia, the bio-ingenuity company dedicated to extracting value where others see waste, today announces a North American distribution agreement with OPEC Systems, and its US subsidiary EPOC Enviro, for their SAFF Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) remediation technology. Allonnia will be the exclusive distribution partner for SAFF in the US, Canada and Mexico, developing a fleet of SAFF units for lease and sale as well as the capability to perform benchtop treatability studies in their Boston laboratories.

PFAS are widely used, long lasting chemicals, the components of which break down very slowly over time. Because of their widespread use, release, and disposal over the decades, PFAS show up virtually everywhere: in soil, surface water, the atmosphere, the deep ocean — even the human body and polar bears.  A recent industry investigation estimates that approximately 158 million people in the U.S. live within a 5-mile range of a potential PFAS contaminated site.

SAFF is an elegant solution that uses a natural process to efficiently remove 99.9999% of PFAS without the use of chemicals or adsorption media, yielding a low volume, high density PFAS concentrate for destruction. The technology has been deployed successfully on three continents and proven to be highly effective at addressing PFAS contamination at military bases, municipal landfills and industrial sites. 

“SAFF is important to Allonnia because it is the most sustainable method available to efficiently remove and concentrate PFAS, and it aligns with our ultimate total solution goal as we continue to develop a PFAS degradation product and real time PFAS biosensor,” said Nicole Richards, CEO, Allonnia. “SAFF can be combined with a degradation technology to provide closed-loop treatment with little to no waste generation.” 

SAFF exploits PFAS’ natural hydrophobic/hydrophilic characteristics to capture PFAS molecules with bubbles introduced to contaminated water for extremely efficient removal, incorporating years of engineering development to specifically address these unique PFAS properties. The SAFF proprietary technology unit is mobile and containerized, designed for immediate deployment in the field in a modular, plug-and-play configuration. 

Allonnia is focused on a three-pronged approach to assist industry partners in assessing their individual challenges:

  • Sensing: Analyzing and evaluating waste streams to understand the presence of contaminants and other target compounds to inform the best solutions;
  • Upcycling: Converting waste into a high-value resource by breaking down, binding or extracting complex molecules to form new material building blocks; and 
  • Remediation: Identifying, optimizing and deploying microbes, enzymes and proteins to efficiently transform contaminants, and render them inert. 

“We chose Allonnia because their core mission of addressing the world’s largest waste problems with sustainable, natural solutions was a precise alignment with why we created SAFF,” said Peter Murphy, Managing Director, OPEC Systems and EPOC Enviro. “For an environmental engineering company like EPOC Enviro, keeping costs low using simple sustainable solutions is key to solving the global PFAS problem, and in SAFF we have found that key.”

The strategic partnership provides Allonnia exclusive distribution rights for OPEC’s all natural, highly efficient PFAS removal technology, SAFF