Outstanding PFAS Wastewater Treatment Wins Patent of the Month

Emerging Compounds Treatment Technologies, Inc. has secured a major milestone in the Fabrication, Waste Management & Circular Economy industry with a newly patented system for wastewater treatment. This innovation focuses on U.S. Patent Publication No. 20260028259, titled ‘Powdered activated carbon (pac) enhanced activated sludge system for removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (pfas) from a flow of wastewater and/or landfill leachate’. The patent describes a powdered activated carbon (PAC) enhanced activated sludge system designed to remove PFAS from wastewater and landfill leachate using impregnated biological flocs.

Outstanding Innovation in Waste Management

This remarkable technology was awarded Swanson Reed’s Patent of the Month for January 2026 in the Fabrication, Waste Management & Circular Economy industry. It was recognized as an outstanding invention for effectively addressing one of the most persistent and difficult environmental challenges today: the filtration of “forever chemicals.”

Patent Abstract

A powdered activated carbon (PAC) enhanced activated sludge system for removing PFAS from a flow of wastewater and/or landfill leachate includes at least one bioreactor including biomass to receive the flow wastewater and/or landfill leachate and to promote growth of biological flocs and an impregnation subsystem which receives a flow of biomass and/or settled biomass and a predetermined amount PAC and blends the biomass and/or the settled biomass with the PAC to form PAC-impregnated biological flocs. The at least one impregnation system outputs a flow of PAC-impregnated biological flocs to the bioreactor such that the PAC-impregnated biological flocs in the bioreactor adsorb to and remove a majority of the PFAS from the flow of wastewater and/or landfill leachate and the bioreactor outputs a flow of PAC-impregnated biological flocs having a majority of the PFAS adsorbed thereto and wastewater and/or landfill leachate having a majority of the PFAS removed. The system also includes at least one secondary clarifier coupled to the bioreactor which separates the PAC-impregnated biological flocs having a majority of the PFAS adsorbed thereto from the wastewater and/or landfill leachate having a majority of the PFAS removed and produces a flow the treated wastewater and/or landfill leachate having a majority of the PFAS removed.

Meeting the U.S. R&D Tax Credit Rules (The Four-Part Test)

For a project to qualify for the U.S. R&D Tax Credit (Section 41), it must satisfy the IRS Four-Part Test. The development of this patent meets these criteria in the following ways:

Permitted Purpose: The research was aimed at developing a new and improved environmental treatment process to effectively remove complex PFAS contaminants from water matrices.
Technological in Nature: The development fundamentally relies on the hard sciences, specifically environmental engineering, chemistry, and biology (e.g., fluid dynamics, biological flocculation, and chemical adsorption mechanics).
Elimination of Uncertainty: At the onset of development, there was technical uncertainty regarding the optimal dosing, mixing speeds, and physical integration methods required to impregnate biological flocs with PAC without destroying the active biomass.
Process of Experimentation: The engineers systematically evaluated alternatives by modeling different bioreactor configurations, conducting pilot tests on clarifier efficiencies, and adjusting PAC-to-biomass ratios to discover the optimal PFAS removal rate.

3 Practical Applications Qualifying for R&D Tax Credits

Applying this patented technology in the real world often requires further engineering that also qualifies for R&D tax credits:

Scaling for Municipal Wastewater Plants: Designing, engineering, and conducting pilot trials to integrate the PAC-impregnation subsystem into existing, large-scale municipal activated sludge facilities to help cities meet new EPA maximum contaminant levels for PFAS.
Custom Leachate Matrix Treatment: Developing and testing custom adaptations of the system to handle the highly variable organic loads, high salinity, and specific competing chemical contaminants that are entirely unique to individual landfill leachate streams.
Industrial Effluent Pre-Treatment Configurations: Experimenting with different biomass types and specific PAC blends to treat highly concentrated point-source industrial effluents (e.g., from chemical manufacturing or semiconductor plants) prior to discharging them into public sewer systems.