Helios Innovations’ technology has been demonstrated to separate and concentrate PFAS from highly contaminated industrial waste streams containing more than 20 million ng/L of AFFF.
PFAS contamination is widely discussed today, especially in the context of drinking water, groundwater protection, wastewater treatment, and human exposure. However, the streams that receive the most public attention are not the ones that have technical bottlenecks. PFAS in municipal, surface, or leachate waters are typically present at concentrations ranging from 100 to 15,000 ng/L. Although these levels are challenging from a regulatory and health perspective, they do not challenge the limits of available technology.
Industrial PFAS streams are fundamentally different. They originate from fire extinguishing foams, discharge testing of fixed fire extinguishing systems, emergency response operations, fire extinguishers, and process wastes handled in industry and defence. These streams do not contain trace levels of PFAS contamination. Instead, it can reach levels of millions to tens of millions of nanograms per liter. Discarded aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) often contains two factors. It is the very high PFAS concentrations and foam behavior due to surfactants that make treatment extremely difficult.
This category of PFAS waste has historically lacked both ownership and technological pathways. Although regulations existed to protect the environment, there were limited instructions for handling the collected waste. As a result, temporary storage, ad hoc processing, and long-distance transportation for disposal have become the default approach. Not because the industry wanted it that way, but because there was no realistic alternative.
Today, this gap is no longer acceptable. The phase-out of AFFF is accelerating globally, leaving the industry with a stockpile of used and discarded foam that must be managed responsibly. Without a scalable treatment approach, regulators, waste disposal companies, and industry face the risk that PFAS may be left in inappropriate long-term storage, mishandled to avoid very costly destruction, or transported across regions without clear treatment routes.
Treatment gap: why existing technologies don’t work here
The majority of PFAS treatment systems on the market are developed for low to moderate concentrations. These systems, including granular activated carbon, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and novel adsorption media, may be technically effective if PFAS levels remain below approximately 50,000 ng/L. Although some advanced systems have demonstrated the potential for removal at higher concentrations, economics generally break down at these extremes.
When exposed to a highly contaminated AFFF waste stream, filter materials become rapidly saturated. The membrane is dirty. Media must be replaced on an ongoing basis. Biological and electrochemical systems lose stability, and adsorption approaches are often orders of magnitude too expensive to operate.
At the same time, a destruction-only pathway also exists, but the upstream bottleneck is not resolved. High-temperature incineration remains the only approved route to destroy PFAS at scale in many regions. But without separation, industry would have to transport and destroy large amounts of water, not pollutants. This results in a cost structure that is incompatible with large-scale implementation.
The result is a large discrepancy. The highest-risk PFAS streams are the least suitable for available technologies designed for low concentrations.
Helios Innovations operates within this gap.
We will focus on locations where PFAS concentrations are too high for existing solutions.
Introducing Helios Innovation
Helios Innovations is a Swedish industrial water technology company focused on treating the most challenging liquid waste streams. PFAS are one of several strategic areas, along with emulsions, chemical residues, slurries, metal-containing fluids, adhesives, and complex wastewater streams, where traditional treatment is technically or economically impossible.
Our solution is not a pilot or laboratory concept. This is a commercially operational system that is deployed in an industrial environment and operates continuously under real-world conditions.
Our first PFAS pilot began in 2023. The first full-scale industrial unit to process waste AFFF was commissioned in 2024. The solution is currently being used commercially by major fire protection and industrial players in Sweden and Norway.
To date, over 1,600 cubic meters of highly contaminated PFAS waste has been processed using our system.
Technology: Evaporative separation built for industrial reality
Although evaporation is a known separation principle, not all evaporation techniques are suitable for this category of waste. Most evaporators are designed for relatively clean process streams. When exposed to waste streams containing oils, surfactants, polymers, and foam-forming chemicals such as AFFF, traditional evaporators are prone to fouling, scaling, reduced performance, and the need to shut down too frequently for cleaning.
Our system is not a traditional evaporator. Helios’ approach combines controlled, low-temperature, closed-system evaporation at atmospheric pressure with a unique recirculation strategy, process stabilization, and an integrated defoaming mechanism. The system is designed to maintain stability even when exposed to rapidly changing compositions, high suspended solids content, and aggressive foaming behavior. This enables continuous operation of waste streams that were previously considered impossible to evaporate on a large scale.
The result is straightforward: water is separated from contaminants. PFAS remain in the concentrated residual stream. The clean distillate can be further processed or discharged depending on local requirements and approvals.
It is built for real-world operations, not laboratory-scale demonstrations.
Proven commercial deployment
Since 2024, Helios has been continuously processing used and discarded AFFF waste streams from fire companies, industrial safety departments, waste service providers and municipal treatment chains in Sweden and Norway.
Currently, approximately 70% of the AFFF waste stream collected in Sweden and 60% of the material collected in Norway passes through the Helios separation process before being destroyed. This includes materials from fixed fire suppression system testing, fire extinguishers, spill recovery, traditional inventory management, and emergency response operations.
The system consistently achieves PFAS separation efficiencies greater than 98% for chain lengths greater than 3 carbons, even at input concentrations greater than 20 million nanograms/liter.
CONTESS Platform: Treatment at the Source
For industrial PFAS treatment to be practical, it must not only be technically effective but also deployable. CONTESS was developed for that purpose. It is a modular, plug-and-play unit that treats hazardous process water directly on-site, with a small footprint and no capital investment or specialized operational staff.
Each unit is delivered as a service, including installation, monitoring, and management of the concentrated waste stream. Customers pay based on processing volume, but receive benefits such as reduced transportation, lower destruction costs, and greater control over compliance processing.
The CONTESS unit operates continuously and autonomously, has a capacity of 1,000 cubic meters per year, and is equipped with remote monitoring and process stability control. Suitable for waste AFFF streams as well as emulsions, metalworking fluids, wash waters and other complex industrial fluids.
By standardizing form factors and delivery models, CONTESS enables scalable deployment and supports the transition from temporary storage and long-distance transportation to managed care at the source.
Case study: Reusing cleaning fluids, mass reduction and circulating water from AFFF production
Manufacturing facilities that make fire extinguishing foam were previously plagued by contaminated cleaning fluids that were sent to high-temperature incineration at high costs. The cleaning solutions after foam production and equipment cleaning contain high concentrations of PFAS and cannot be treated using traditional methods. Every drop of that water had to be transported off-site for incineration. This is an expensive and carbon-intensive process.
In 2025, the facility commissioned Helios evaporation technology on site. Reduced amount of waste by approximately 90%. Previously, 100% of the wastewater was destroyed, but now only 10% remains in the concentrated residue. Scope 3 CO₂ emissions were reduced by approximately 16 tonnes per year due to reduced transport and destruction. The unit operates continuously under industrial conditions with automatic monitoring.
This example shows how a previously wasteful water stream due to foam generation can be converted into a manageable stream. The result is lower costs, a reduced environmental footprint, and significantly reduced transportation and waste. For industry segments facing similar challenges, this model provides a scalable and practical alternative to the default incineration of entire water volumes.
Why concentration enables scalable destruction
Currently, the limiting factor is not the incineration capacity itself. This is the volume that enters the chain of destruction.
Processing high-PFAS waste without a separation step increases transportation and destruction costs overall. Most AFFF waste streams are more than 95% water, so the majority of today’s costs are associated with water transportation and destruction.
Concentrating PFAS dramatically changes the equation. Converting large amounts of AFFF waste into small amounts of highly concentrated PFAS fractions makes destruction dramatically cheaper and more operational. Depending on the composition and moisture level of the waste stream, the volume that needs to be destroyed is reduced by a factor of 10 to 30.
Sweden currently has only one facility that accepts highly concentrated PFAS waste for destruction. Even with this constrained system, centralization greatly improves feasibility by reducing transport volumes while maintaining environmental compliance.
The same model applies across Europe, where PFAS contamination exists in many regions, but destruction capacity is centralized or limited. In some cases, large industrial sites may eventually produce enough concentrated material to support on-site destruction. But for most organizations, separation and focus remain essential to enabling the chain of destruction.
Separate first, then destroy is the only scalable industrial PFAS treatment model.
Looking forward: From PFAS to the broader hazardous waste challenge
PFAS processing is one of the clearest examples of the need for scalable separation and enrichment infrastructure, but it is not the only one. The same platform used for PFAS is being deployed for emulsions, slurries, oil-containing wastes, chemical residues, and other complex wastewaters that are prohibitively expensive to transport, treat, or destroy.
The long-term goals are the same for all waste categories. This means reducing volumes, stabilizing processing, and allowing routes for reuse, recycling, or destruction, depending on the material.
As regulations tighten and the industry moves toward traceability, mass balance, and circular responsibility, the ability to separate pollutants at source is becoming increasingly strategic.
call to action
Handling industrial PFAS cannot rely solely on regulation or long-term storage. The world needs clear deployment paths, transparent material balances, and cooperation between separation and destruction technologies. The discussion must move from problem definition to implementation.
The question of whether extreme PFAS waste can be treated has already been resolved. The remaining work is to expand access so that it becomes the standard rather than the exception.
This article will be published in an upcoming PFAS Special Focus Publication in January.
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