During the 2021 Annual SERDP – ESTCP Conference, Jerry Back, a Senior Engineer with Jensen Hughes was recognized with an award for Program of the Year. The program (WP19-5324) was a two-year effort to assess the firefighting capabilities of the commercially available PFAS-Free AFFF alternatives in DoD applications. The literature search identified 60-70 products being marketed as environmentally friendly AFFF alternatives. Twenty-five of these products were tested on an approval scale to quantify their capabilities compared to a legacy C6 AFFF formulation. Five of the products demonstrated superior capabilities and were subsequently assessed over a range of very large-scale fire scenarios. These five products now form the basis for several other SERDP-ESTCP efforts focused on health hazards and environmental concerns. During one of the conference technical sessions, Jerry presented the findings of this study and a detailed description of three follow-on efforts. During this presentation, Jerry described the capabilities and limitations of these top-performing products and concluded that “These are decent products” and “We can and will make them work” in DoD applications. Jerry’s concluding remarks were quoted in a recent Bloomberg article published on Dec 1st titled “Defense Department Gaining Data to Rid Firefighting Foam of PFAS.”
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