Chemical Industry Review: Specials Magazine

How can PFAS contamination be permanently destroyed without disrupting industries that depend on forever chemicals? You wake up in the morning and reach for your phone. You drive to work. You board a plane. You pick up a prescription or watch someone you love recover because a medical device did what it was designed to do. Each of these moments feels unrelated. But per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) thread through each one. PFAS have built modern life, behind the panels and under the wiring. Five hundred miles of PFAS-coated wire keep a commercial aircraft from catching fire. Heart stents and IV lines depend on them. Semiconductor fabs rely on them to etch the chips that run everything from a phone to a power grid. Pharmaceutical manufacturing uses them to deliver medications that work as intended. Strip PFAS from everyday life and halt the availability of products essential to modern life. That is the chemistry at the center of this story. PFAS are in the water. They persist, accumulate and earn the nickname ‘forever chemicals’ because once they enter the environment, they stay. For decades, public conversation has treated this as a binary. Ban PFAS or accept the contamination. Two unsatisfying answers to a question that deserves a better one. Claros Technologies is building a better answer, the third way. ClarosTechUV™ destroys long-, short- and ultra-short-chain PFAS compounds in aqueous waste streams at rates of hundreds of gallons per minute, with 99.99 percent effectiveness using a proprietary reactor system. What this means is that PFAS chemistries are broken apart and mineralized down to their elemental components, primarily fluoride ions, rather than captured and moved elsewhere. Permanent destruction is now possible. “The story is not simply about a new technology. It is about an inflection point where the PFAS challenge begins to shift from a problem that must be managed to one that can realistically be solved,” says John Brockgreitens, Ph.D., VP of Product Development and Co-founder of Claros Technologies. Industries that depend on PFAS no longer have to choose between using them and protecting the environment around their facilities. Regulators no longer have to weigh economic disruption against environmental responsibility.

What approach does Biofine use to convert cellulosic waste into fuels and chemicals? Biofine Technology has spent 25 years refining a hydrolysis reactor designed to convert cellulosic waste into fuels and chemicals at commercial scale. The system is structured around identified end markets and controlled expansion, with scale-up risk deliberately confined to the hydrolysis reactor. How does the proprietary hydrolysis reactor separate feedstock into valuable output streams? At the core of the process is a proprietary hydrolysis reactor that separates lignocellulosic feedstock into discrete valuable streams based on high yield primary outputs of levulinic acid, formic acid, furfural and biochar. Innovation is intentionally concentrated within this reactor, while downstream separation and purification rely on established commercially available equipment. This deliberate configuration limits technical uncertainty during expansion. With 25 years of development and 30 million dollars invested, the reactor has logged thousands of operating hours across forest residues, waste paper and agricultural wastes. Profitability potential was indicated at the demonstration stage, establishing commercial discipline before scale. U.S. process patents awarded in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2025 reinforce the technical defensibility of the platform. Dr. Stephen Fitzpatrick received the Presidential Green Chemistry Award in 1999, underscoring the scientific foundation behind the technology. “Our uniqueness lies in the capacity to valorise every fraction of the feedstock to ensure no material goes to waste,” says Dr. Stephen Fitzpatrick, President..