Claros Technologies has signed a commercial agreement with Daikin America for full-scale deployment of its ClarosTechUV PFAS destruction system at the chemical manufacturer’s Decatur, Alabama plant, moving a treatment process already tested on site into long-term industrial operation. The installation follows a commercial optimisation run completed in December 2025, when the system treated more than 170,000 gallons of industrial process water and Claros reported greater than 99.99% destruction across targeted long, short and ultra-short chain PFAS compounds.
ClarosTechUV uses an enhanced ultraviolet photochemical process to break the carbon-fluorine bonds that give per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances their persistence. The system is designed to destroy target compounds within the treatment train rather than capture them on activated carbon, ion-exchange media or membranes for later handling, placing the destruction stage close to the process water that produced the contamination. Claros says the technology operates at ambient temperature and pressure and can be configured for continuous high flow treatment.
The Decatur programme has developed through several operating stages rather than a single demonstration. An earlier 2025 pilot treated more than 50,000 gallons of wastewater, after which the larger optimisation run processed more than 170,000 gallons at flow rates capable of reaching hundreds of gallons per minute. Claros says the later campaign confirmed performance across a broader group of PFAS compounds, including ultra-short chain species that can be difficult to address through conventional capture systems.
Daikin’s manufacturing environment gives the programme a more demanding test than laboratory water or a short batch trial because the treatment system has to deal with an industrial water matrix while the surrounding plant continues operating. Flow, contaminant concentration and other water characteristics can vary as production changes, so reactor performance has to be maintained across conditions that are less controlled than those used during early development. The commercial agreement moves that requirement from a defined optimisation campaign into routine plant infrastructure.
Claros has developed the ClarosTechUV 1100 around continuous applications, with the system intended to fit into existing industrial wastewater treatment trains. Its published specification describes throughput of hundreds of gallons per minute and on-site treatment of industrial wastewater, groundwater and municipal wastewater. Integration still depends on the individual site because pretreatment, flow control, residence time and downstream verification have to match the chemistry of the incoming stream rather than assuming one operating recipe will suit every plant.
Analytical verification remains central to the deployment because reducing the concentration of a measured parent compound does not by itself prove that fluorinated material has been destroyed. PFAS treatment can transform longer molecules into shorter species, leaving fluorinated products in the water even when the original compound is no longer detected. Claros operates an ISO/IEC 17025 accredited analytical laboratory alongside its destruction business and uses measurements across long, short and ultra-short chain compounds to compare the water entering and leaving the process.
The commercial system also changes the waste route around PFAS management. Capture technologies can be highly effective at removing contaminants from water, but the resulting carbon, resin, membrane concentrate or other residual material still requires treatment, regeneration or disposal. Destruction at the manufacturing site is intended to reduce that transfer by breaking down target compounds before they leave the treatment system, although any pretreatment residues and non-target contaminants still have to be managed through the plant’s normal waste processes.
Operating economics will now become easier to judge because permanent equipment exposes maintenance, energy use, uptime, consumables and water variability over a much longer period than a pilot. UV equipment has to retain output as lamps and optical surfaces age, while pumps, flow controls and analytical systems have to remain available around a manufacturing schedule that cannot be organised solely for the benefit of the treatment process. Those factors determine whether a high destruction percentage can be sustained at a cost suitable for continuous industrial use.
Claros has been expanding the technology into other industrial settings during 2026, including a pharmaceutical manufacturing trial, and raised $55 million in Series B financing to accelerate commercialisation. The Daikin project remains a particularly important reference because the same site has taken the process through pilot work, commercial optimisation and now a full-scale agreement, giving the companies a continuous operating history rather than a sequence of unrelated demonstrations.
Daikin manufactures fluorochemical materials used across industrial applications, placing PFAS management within a plant where fluorinated chemistry forms part of production rather than arising only from legacy environmental contamination. The permanent installation therefore has to function as manufacturing infrastructure, with treatment performance, analytical assurance and equipment availability maintained alongside the processes generating the water.
The move to full-scale deployment closes one engineering phase while opening a longer operating test. Claros has already shown that the system can process more than 170,000 gallons at industrial scale; the commercial installation now has to reproduce the claimed destruction performance over sustained operation while demonstrating that maintenance, energy consumption and treatment cost remain compatible with routine manufacturing use.
