PFAS analysis
That is according to research published this week by the Swedish chemicals watchdog ChemSec.
For laboratories already stretched by PFAS testing demand, the findings point to more work, not less, on both the production and the compliance side.
The findings also revive concerns that PFAS restriction efforts already underway in Europe, the UK and parts of the US could be undermined by a fresh wave of production.
ChemSec’s survey of the top ten manufacturers found that nearly all had expansion plans, at sites across Europe, Asia and North America.
Anne-Sofie Bäckar, the organisation’s executive director, said that without government intervention to force a phaseout, the industry faces what she called a fresh surge of persistent compounds.
Two applications are driving the expansion: semiconductor fabrication and data centre cooling.
Modern AI hardware generates far more heat per rack than earlier computing infrastructure. Two-phase immersion cooling, in which servers sit in a bath of fluorinated fluid, has become an increasingly common solution.
The fluid boils off heat as it vaporises, then condenses and recirculates. Many of the fluids used are PFAS-based, prized for their thermal stability and resistance to breakdown under heat.
Several manufacturers have framed new investment explicitly around AI demand. Japan’s Daikin said it was establishing a dedicated data centre hub and intended to expand sales of its existing fluorine products.
French group Arkema has brought a US$60 million production unit online in Calvert City, Kentucky, upgrading a former HFC line to supply low-global-warming-potential fluorogases for data centre cooling and building insulation.
US producer Chemours said its liquid cooling products were aimed at advanced data centres and AI hardware, reducing energy, water and maintenance costs for operators.
Other manufacturers cited by ChemSec as planning expansion include Japan’s AGC, China’s Dongyue, India’s Gujarat Fluorochemicals, Russia’s HaloPolymer, Mexico’s Orbia Fluor & Energy Materials, US-based Solstice and Belgium’s Syensqo.
Several also pointed to PFAS-based coatings and binders used in lithium-ion batteries as a parallel growth area, alongside data centres and semiconductors.
Two manufacturers stood apart from the trend. Switzerland’s Archroma is marketing PFAS-free alternatives rather than expanding PFAS output.
Germany’s BASF, the world’s largest chemicals group, has said it intends to exit PFAS production by 2028, a commitment it adopted in 2023 and has reaffirmed since.
The expansion is landing at the same time as growing compliance monitoring obligations on existing PFAS producers, work that falls largely to environmental and analytical laboratories.
Chemours’ cooling-products push comes months after the company agreed a US$450 million settlement with the EPA, the Department of Justice and West Virginia’s environmental regulator over PFAS discharges at three facilities.
The consent decree requires Chemours to cut releases of GenX, a PFAS compound, by at least 99 per cent at its Washington Works site.
It also funds 14 specified projects to reduce PFAS in wastewater, stormwater and groundwater at that site.
It also requires Chemours to hire an independent engineer to evaluate its GenX-related processes, map potential release points and quantify releases over a calendar year, work that depends on rigorous environmental sampling and analysis.
Separately, new production capacity such as Arkema’s Kentucky facility brings its own baseline and ongoing effluent monitoring requirements as sites come online and permits are established.
The RAC’s own opinion on the EU’s proposed PFAS restriction, covered separately by this title, has already flagged standardised analytical methods as a genuine constraint on enforcement.
That constraint applies directly here: as fluorinated fluid formulations diversify across cooling and semiconductor applications, consistently identifying and quantifying an expanding, changing pool of PFAS compounds is the same problem regulators are trying to solve.
The chemistry that makes PFAS useful, exceptionally strong carbon-fluorine bonds resisting heat, water and corrosion, is the same property that prevents the compounds breaking down once released.
A 2022 assessment in Environmental Science & Technology concluded that PFAS contamination has pushed the relevant planetary boundary for chemical pollution beyond a safe operating threshold.
Separate biomonitoring studies have found PFAS in the blood of more than 99 per cent of people tested.
Exposure is linked in the research literature to cancer, liver and kidney effects, elevated cholesterol and developmental harm.
To underline the point, ChemSec sent finger-prick blood test kits to the chief executives of the European companies on its list, inviting them to test and publish their own PFAS levels.
It is testing that laboratories in the sector are already equipped to provide at scale.
Financial analysts have separately flagged the industry’s reliance on PFAS as a source of contingent risk, warning of exposure to large-scale remediation and litigation costs as regulatory scrutiny intensifies.
That trend keeps demand for laboratory verification work ahead of it rather than behind it.
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