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Review
. 2025 Jul;97(7):e70130.
doi: 10.1002/wer.70130.

Spent Media Management Pathways for PFAS Treatment Applications

Alison L Ling  1 , Tiffany Stegner  2 , Margaret Thompson  3 , Sudhakar Viswanathan  4 , Brian R Pinkard  5 , Kathryn M Wolohan  6 , Don E Richard  6 , Anderson Ellis  5   7
Affiliations
Review

Spent Media Management Pathways for PFAS Treatment Applications

Alison L Ling et al. Water Environ Res. 2025 Jul.

Abstract

Removing PFAS from water is increasingly needed to comply with evolving regulations in multiple industries, including drinking water production, municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, and contaminated site remediation. This change is driving increased use of adsorptive media to remove PFAS from drinking water. Granular activated carbon (GAC) and anion exchange resin (AER) are the two predominantly applied media used to separate PFAS from water. Both technologies produce PFAS-laden spent media that requires downstream management, with significant operating costs and regulatory uncertainty. Once GAC or AER media is spent, it can be physically changed out from treatment vessels or regenerated in place. Spent media can be managed through existing offerings like incineration or GAC reactivation or through emerging offerings like supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). Spent regenerant can be recovered and reused, with concentrated PFAS-laden liquid managed through offsite incineration or emerging PFAS destruction methods. Both offsite GAC reactivation and onsite regeneration of either AER or GAC have the potential to reduce operating costs and energy use relative to single-use media procurement and disposal.

Keywords: anion exchange resin (AER); emerging contaminants; granular activated carbon (GAC); industrial pretreatment; per‐ and poly‐fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS); spent media.

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Conflict of interest statement

Tiffany Stegner, Maggie Thompson, Sudhakhar Viswanathan, and Brian Pinkard are employees of companies that develop, demonstrate, and sell PFAS treatment technologies and/or services in the area of spent media management. Katie Wolohan and Don Richard are consultants at a company that has done work for and with similar technology companies in the past.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
IXR schematic showing typical IX regeneration process flow before liquid PFAS destruction step.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Proposed GAC regeneration scenarios.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Summary of management pathways for spent, PFAS‐laden sorption media.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Estimated energy usage for spent media management pathways. Uncertainty bars are shown for new media makeup, destruction, and solvent management components.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Estimated operations and maintenance costs for spent media management pathways. Uncertainty bars are shown for new media makeup and destruction components.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Spent media management decision‐making framework.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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