SORBSEAL SOLVING BIG PROBLEMS

This week, the Honourable Glenn Butcher, Minister for Regional Development and Manufacturing and Minister for Water joined Geofabrics Australasia to formally launch our latest innovation SORBSEAL; a next-generation, hybrid Geosynthetic Clay Liner (GCL), specifically designed to trap PFAS and other harmful emerging contaminants.

Geofabrics Australasia are the proud recipient of funding from the Palaszczuk Queensland Government’s Made in QLD (MIQ) program which helps small and medium-sized manufacturers increase international competitiveness, productivity and innovation through the adoption of new technologies. With this support from the Queensland Government, we have been able to enhance our equipment and apply world best practice to making SORBSEAL in Queensland.

SORBSEAL is an Australian made solution for the containment of PFAS and other emerging contaminants. It has multi-purpose use across a range of applications including base liners and capping of contaminated materials, ensuring that these harmful chemicals do not find their way into the environment.

Dennis Grech comments, “The launch of SORBSEAL demonstrates everything that is great about Made in Australia; local R&D and ingenuity, creating a solution to one of the world’s greatest emerging problems, PFAS contamination. Developed and designed in Australia and now made in Australia.

Geofabrics Australasia thrives to connect local R&D with product development that solves big environmental problems such as PFAS and to provide our customers with solutions that build our nation’s infrastructure in a responsible and sustainable way.

Bidim Green, Australia’s only locally made geotextile now incorporating recycled material and now SORBSEAL, demonstrates we are taking significant strides in evolving geosynthetics into a sustainable and risk-free solution for our customers.”

In developing SORBSEAL, Daniel Gibbs states, “Unlike individual chemicals such as mercury, where human health effects with a certain exposure level and duration are reasonably well documented; contaminants of emerging concern such as PFAS, present a much larger challenge for the human race.

PFAS are a very large group of compounds, all containing at least one specific perfluoroalkyl moiety but each with a slightly different chemical signature, different half-lives in humans, different mobility in the environment and varying effects on the human body.

PFAS are still used in a wide variety of everyday household products which ultimately end up in landfill. After initial studies on standard Geosynthetic Clay Liners (GCL) showed poor retention of a number of these compounds, we realised a change was required.

This was the impetus for the development of SORBSEAL; a next-generation hybrid GCL which contains a very specific, high surface area activated carbon, produced right here in Australia.”