Fighting chemicals with chemistry

This past summer, barrels upon barrels of foam used to extinguish fires were collected around New Hampshire and sent off to Ohio — 11,017 gallons, to be exact. But last month, remnants of the foam returned to New England to be tested in a laboratory in Norwell, Massachusetts.

Those gallons of foam contained PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), carcinogenic “forever chemicals” introduced to fire departments nationwide in the 1970s through aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) that posed silent but harmful health risks to crews for decades. In June 2022, the NH Department of Environmental Services tracked down legacy AFFF inventory across the state’s fire departments and gathered it at 10 “AFFF Take Back” events in each of the state’s 10 counties.

Then, in 2023, New Hampshire state officials partnered with Revive Environmental, a Columbus, Ohio-based firm, to have its team run the foam through its “PFAS Annihilator” method. Revive eliminates the substances from AFFF in a process known as supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). The business was spun off from the research of science and technology nonprofit Battelle to collect and destroy PFAS in various materials and filter chemicals from water using granular activated carbon.