A Mini-Review of Full-Scale Drinking Water Treatment Plants for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Removal: Possible Solutions and Future Directions

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) recently finalized the enforceable maximum contaminant levels for some per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water which intends to substantially decrease their level in it. Conventional processes in full-scale drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) are usually inefficient in PFAS removal from source water (i.e., groundwater and surface water). There is an increasing interest in investigating/evaluating advanced treatment technologies for PFAS removal from PFAS-contaminated water to help generate a number of potential solutions to this water engineering design challenge/problem. While numerous excellent research studies have been carried out and reported in the literature on the efficiency of several treatment processes in removing PFAS from PFAS-contaminated water, mostly at lab- and pilot-scales, full-scale DWTP investigations still need further attention. This study reviews the US EPA’s PFAS water quality guidelines/regulations, remediation technologies for PFAS in water, and PFAS removal studies on full-scale DWTPs. Then, it discusses some configurations of DWTP for PFAS removal from source water (i.e., groundwater and surface water) as well as suggesting future directions. Further research on the effect of environmental factors (e.g., organic matter) on PFAS removal, the effective elimination of short-chain PFAS from real PFAS-contaminated source water using cost-effective and industrially applicable remediation technologies, the efficiency/performance of full-scale treatment trains including innovative advanced technologies in long-term for PFAS removal from source water to produce drinking water and the associated costs, as well as cost reduction/minimization via process optimization is still of interest.