Targeting short-chain PFAS destruction in industrial water

An initial focus on groundwater remediation

Oxyle originally entered the PFAS remediation market as a start-up focusing on contaminated groundwater. 

“The catalytic treatment technology was designed for low concentration remediation groundwater treatments, even some soil wash remediation cases,” Mushtaq tells Aquatech Online. “It was specifically designed for this because the matrix is much more predictable, i.e. it's lower in complicated matrix constituents; the chemical oxygen demand (COD) is not very high, and there's a low total suspended solid (TSS) count.”

Its groundwater solution used a catalyst activated by turbulence in water to break down and mineralise broad-spectrum PFAS (from ultra-short to long-chain) into harmless by-products, such as fluoride ions, sulphate ions, and carbon dioxide.

Mechanical activation of the catalyst was achieved using established water treatment technologies such as turbulent flow or aeration. And because PFAS chemicals were destroyed on a molecular level, there was no secondary waste, which meant there was no need for any further waste management.

When the company started, there were already regulations in place in Switzerland, and customers who needed remediation solutions, which effectively created a market for a specific technology. The groundwater from client to client was more or less the same, and the matrix was consistent: “This was a great place for us to enter because the complexity of the technology required was lower for us as a start-up,” adds Mushtaq.

 

Developing an industrial solution at the same time

However, while the groundwater remediation market was always going to be the company’s first focus, at the same time, it was developing a solution for the industrial market. 

Mushtaq explains: “Two things became clear from our testing and pilots: one, that most customers with long and medium chain PFAS in groundwater sites were happy with only having to change their activated carbon every three years or so. The other was that activated carbon suffers when trying to treat short-chain PFAS, and that there is a real urgency from the customer to act in that segment.”

For Oxyle, industries producing water with short-chain PFAS became an obvious focus for developing cost-effective solutions: “That was where the needs are very present, where customers need to be producing these chemicals and using them every single day to produce the goods we use, such as textiles, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides. They are used everywhere, they are constantly being produced, and there was no viable solution.”

Another challenge for Oxyle’s catalytic solution was the relaxation of regulations in the US, with the extensions to permits delaying the need for businesses producing PFAS to act and with no real focus on ultra-short chain remediation. This coincided with lab-scale trials with customers showing water with high concentrations of PFAS (measured in parts per million, rather than trillion), often with different water qualities. “No water was the same,” says Mushtaq, “which meant we needed to deploy a solution mindset for those clients.”

 

The challenge of industrial water remediation

One of the reasons Oxyle developed its industrial water technology alongside its groundwater solution, without offering something to the market at the same time, is the complexity of the challenges that start-ups face in that sector. 

“You realise from the very beginning how complex and fragmented the go-to market could be; every customer’s water has different needs. Regulations vary, and permits vary from country to country,” explains Mushtaq.

Another challenge is that the nature of PFAS pollution in industrial water makes it a sensitive topic for many companies. Often, they don’t want to talk about and that makes it hard to gain references for any remediation work carried out, no matter how successful.

One advantage of testing and piloting in this way is that it gave Oxyle the time to deploy, adjust, and develop its technologies against a backdrop of changing regulations and customer needs. 

 

Good data and strong regulations

Pilots in the industrial sector produced quality data on ultra-short chain destruction for really complex waters (PFAS concentration in ppm). This revealed that the destruction (full mineralisation) of all PFAS in a client's water was possible and that it could be achieved without the need for any shutdowns on site, ensuring business continuity, while avoiding the need to burn waste produce or being left with water that can’t be reused. 

Inbound leads began to focus on short and ultra-short chain PFAS destruction, in part, driven by regulations such as those in France, as Mushtaq explains: “In France, they need to report if there's PFAS in the water, and if there is, you can’t renew your permit unless you have a robust solution in place to deal with it and some of those come with conditional fines.”

A modular solution tailored to customer requirements that offers total PFAS destruction without the need for burning becomes an attractive proposition in that scenario.
“We realised that we could make a big impact and that the place to do that was upstream, not downstream,” adds Mushtaq.

 

Successful funding round helps the transition

By running the testing alongside the activated carbon groundwater solution, Oxyle was able to understand more about the funding required to focus fully on industrial water. A funding round in January 2025 raised €14.6 million to help with the company’s focus on industrial water and to develop its PFAS Solutions offering. 

“We started making a lot of improvements and gains with customers last year on the industrial water side. Last year, we launched a full-scale pilot solution for a customer in the remediation segment with a Swiss customer. This operated successfully for six months, meeting all of the pilot’s requirements in terms of discharge limits and energy values.”

 

What does PFAS Solutions offer?

PFAS Solutions offers three separate elements that are offered as modular systems that can be combined to meet client needs and tailored to each site. Together, the technologies have been built to eliminate the most challenging PFAS – short and ultra-short chains. 

“For the last three years, we have been developing technology specifically for really high-concentration challenging matrices of PFAS, where we're not reliant on PPT levels, we can do PPM. We can degrade, oxidise, and reduce all the PFAS compounds and mineralise them, essentially deflourinating them,” states Mushtaq. 

“In a couple of hours, we can tune the process to go from PPM concentration to levels where you can't detect the PFAS in the water anymore. You can’t just destroy them; you have to own the whole process.”

Each technology is proprietary:

• OxFoam: Oxyle’s foam fractionation technology separates and concentrates PFAS. 
• OxLight: Oxyle’s photochemical reduction technology eliminates PFAS, including high concentrations of short and ultra-short chains. 
• OxSignal: Oxyle’s real-time monitoring platform delivers continuous insights into treatment performance. 

Mushtaq likens the modular approach to building with Lego blocks. “It’s about building the right modular solution for that customer because no one solution fits all. We want to do this plug-and-play solution of picking the right solutions from a total cost of ownership perspective.”

In some cases, the client’s water might need to undergo a pre-treatment to make the system work more effectively and efficiently. Although Oxyle doesn’t offer this as part of its PFAS Solutions offering, the company has strong partnerships in the industry that it can recommend.

“We might recommend some coagulation, that’s the first Lego block,” Mushtaq begins. “Then we use OxFoam and OxLight, for example, the concentration and destruction become the next building blocks.”

Offering an end-to-end solution eliminates blind spots in the process, avoiding costly tweaks between different systems. “What we're doing in this new way of coming to the market is taking the full ownership from the front end for the customer,” Mushtaq concludes.

 

What does the future hold for Oxyle’s PFAS Solutions?

First full-scale pilot project this year, operating at the volumes the client wants from a working solution. This allows for a few months to adjust the offering to meet the real-world challenges of the client site before implementing a full industrialised solution.

“This year, we hope to do at least two pilots with two different customers, one in the Swiss region and one in the Benelux region,” begins Mushtaq. “It's exciting for us to go for a pilot with very tricky water. When we do a pilot, we try to do more than one stream for the client because they all have individual problems to treat.”

Data from the pilots will include sizing, the CAPEX reduction option, and the OPEX reduction option. 

“We want to make sure the pilot data is taken into account when we do the full-scale design to make sure that the total cost of ownership is economical for each client.”

Oxyle hopes to implement the full-scale solution in quarter one 2026. Although the timescales are tight, Mushtaq explains that the company has a good track record of converting pilots to full-scale implementation.