Woodard, S. and M. Sinnett. | CRC Care International Cleanup Conference, 8-12 September, Adelaide, Australia, 18 slides, 2019

The U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering Center (AFCEC) has conducted response activities to remediate groundwater impacted by PFOA and PFOS at the fire training area (FTA) of the former Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. AFCEC conduct a pilot test in 2016 in parallel with the City of Portsmouth, NH, whose drinking water was affected by contamination from the FTA. The pilot tests compared the ability, scalability, design parameters, and sizing of an LC1 ion exchange (IX) resin and F400 granular activated carbon (GAC) system to remove PFAS from the Haven Well and FTA groundwater. AFCEC chose the IX system for full-scale application, based on system performance and a lower overall lifecycle. A 12.5 L/sec system installed from fall 2017-spring 2018 has been consistently non-detect for 13 PFAS compounds. Five successful resin regenerations were performed by late April 2019. The original super-loading media is still operational, having removed and concentrated >99.99% of the recovered PFAS mass. The IX resin substantially outperformed GAC on 12 PFAS in the drinking water pilot test. The GAC column was operated until PFOA/PFOS breakthrough reached 0.07 µg/L, at ~13,000-bed volumes (BV). The IX resin effluent remained well below the 0.07 µg/L HAL, even after treating more than 171,000 BVs. Based on the results of the comparative pilot test and the associated lifecycle cost comparison, the City selected LC1 IX resin for full-scale implementation to remove PFAS from the Haven water supply. http://adelaide2019.cleanupconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/M42f.pdf More information on the Portsmouth PFAS system: https://www.cityofportsmouth.com/publicworks/water/portsmouth-water-system-pfas-update.