House natural resources committee hears presentation on commercial PFAS destruction technology

The Michigan House Committee on Natural Resources and Tourism heard testimony from Revive Environmental on a commercial process the company says can permanently destroy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in contaminated liquids.

David Truba, chief executive officer of Revive Environmental, told the committee by Zoom that the company’s supercritical-water reactors operate at “600 degrees C and over 3,200 PSI” and that the result is “water, salt” and an innocuous fluorinated salt rather than persistent PFAS compounds. Truba said the company’s current operations include a facility near Grand Rapids and contracts with three states for treatment of concentrated firefighting-foam (AFFF) wastes and other PFAS-impacted liquids.

Committee members were shown maps and examples of Michigan sites with PFAS detections, and Truba noted that Michigan’s broad testing programs and state permitting have encouraged companies to validate and deploy destructive technologies. He said Michigan was among the first states to permit a destruction technology and that the company pursues both air and discharge permits to operate locally while providing batch-level certificates documenting treated effluent.

Truba described…