PFAS, often called "forever chemicals," present in municipal solid waste can survive the high temperatures of waste incineration and continue to spread into the environment via residues from waste-to-energy plants.
A new doctoral thesis from Sofie Björklund, a student at Umeå University's Industrial Doctoral School, reveals that the most common type of PFAS found in ash, condensate, and flue gases is also the most challenging to capture once they have entered the environment.
The research, initiated by the collaboration partner Umeå Energi, aimed to uncover the fate of PFAS during the handling and incineration of municipal solid waste.
"When we began this project a few years ago, there was very little research on PFAS behavior in large-scale waste-to-energy facilities. Now, an increasing number of studies, including those from our research group, confirm that PFAS are not completely destroyed during incineration and can be found in the byproducts of the process," says Björklund.
Short-chain PFAS are the most common
