PROJECT TITLE: Fate and Transport of Volatile PFAS in Bench-Scale Municipal Solid Waste Landfills

Project Sponsor: Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management

Project Duration: Oct. 01, 2023 - Sept. 30, 2024

Project Overview

*While there have been tremendous knowledge advances in PFAS in municipal solid waste (MSW) landfilling, the following three research questions regarding the volatile PFAS fate and transport have not been answered: 1) Which types of MSW produce volatile PFAS in gas emission? 2) How do volatile PFAS concentrations in leachate and gas emission change with time during landfilling? 3) Are volatile PFAS leached to leachate and released to gas emission mainly through reaction of precursors?

The following three tasks are proposed to address the above three questions, respectively. Task 1 (i.e., Volatile PFAS source characterization) of this project is to characterize the MSW sources that contain volatile PFAS or precursors of these PFAS. It focuses on experimental determination of representative volatile PFAS (i.e., fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs)) in representative municipal solid waste (i.e., various consumer products). Task 2 (i.e., Volatile PFAS leached to leachate and released to gas emission) is to determine the change of volatile PFAS concentrations in leachate and gas emission in bench-scale landfills for six types of representative municipal solid waste: one type of waste in each landfill. Task 3 (i.e., Volatile PFAS release mechanisms) is to estimate the percentage of volatile PFAS leaching and release due to reaction of the PFAS precursors. *