Research at Penn State on perchlorate and chlorate has been funded by a variety of sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AWWARF), Regenesis, and the Stan and Flora Kappe endowment. These projects cover both laboratory experiments and pilot scale testing of reactors. Our engineering collaborators on perchlorate removal technologies include Camp, Dresser and McKee (CDM), and EnSafe.

In 1998, Penn State filed a patent application for the concept of using fixed bed reactor technologies, and this patent was granted in 2000 (US Patent No. 6214607). These reactors can be fueled with organic substrates, such as acetate or acetic acid, or only inorganic substrates, using hydrogen gas. The process is called the PSU-O4 system (where O4 is our shorthand notation for perchlorate). In the summer of 2001, the PSU-O4 system was field tested at the Redlands Texas Well Street facility in Redlands, California. It was demonstrated that with proper backwashing and feed loads, the system could remove perchlorate to below the detection limit (4 ppb). Our research in this area is being consolidated and will soon be reviewed for publication. ss

Details of our projects are available from this website. You can also use these links on this page to find information on perchlorate publications. There is a separate link set up for just the Penn State publications in this area in the menu on the left, or you can go to Bruce Logan’s homepage for all of his publications and presentations on this and other topics.

The last major Perchlorate Conference was planned on October 16-18, 2002, in Ontario California. You can view presentations from my lab by going to the Web Presentations Site, or directly to our talks:

- Introduction and Overview of Perchlorate Remediation
- Laboratory Reactors: Sand
- Laboratory Reactors: Hydrogen
- Pilot Scale Reactors: Sand media
- Pilot Scale Reactors: Plastic media