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A Fabricated Geomembrane Institute (FGI) webinar on the Strengths and Uncertainties Regarding PFAS Containment by Modern Liner Systems will take place on November 10 at noon CST, 1 p.m. EST (live); November 11, 2022 at noon AEST (Pre-recorded – Australia); November 11, 2022 at noon CAT (Pre-recorded – South Africa); and November 14, 2022 at 5 p.m. JST (Pre-recorded – Japan). The webinar is presented by R. Kerry Rowe, Ph.D., P.E., Queens University, is free to industry professionals and students, a 1.0 PDH is available, and you can register here.
Rowe will address: What is PFAS? Where does it come from? How long does it last? And how should it be contained? He will also discuss concentrations of PFAS with an emphasis on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), their potential for reaching groundwater, and their impact on the service life of geomembranes.
Rowe is a civil engineer noted as one of the pioneers of geosynthetics. A particular line of his research is assessing the effectiveness of plastic (geomembrane) liners and geosynthetic clay liners (a composite material incorporating clay) that limit contamination from mining operations and waste disposal facilities. His research has also included tunnelling in soft ground, and reinforcement of embankments and retaining walls. He has developed new computational modelling and experimental techniques. His experimental work ranges from small-scale laboratory tests on system components to mesocosms where a full-scale system is examined under controlled conditions — in some cases for more than a decade — and full-scale field monitoring from the Arctic to the Antarctic.