About Us

In 2012, Clarkson University received funding from the EPA for research that Selma, Tom and colleague Chris Bellona (now at the Colorado School of Mines), conducted to develop a small-scale water treatment system that combines plasma and membrane technologies.

As a part of the plasma reactor development, the team investigated its treatment performance on a range of different contaminants although PFAS was not part of that project. At the same time Tom also had an EPA funded project that was measuring the concentrations of PFAS in the Great Lakes, and suggested to add some PFOA and PFOS to the chemical mix the plasma team was testing. There were really no expectations of success given that there was no technology at the time able to destroy PFAS.

Of 23 contaminants tested (pharmaceuticals, personal care products, etc.) the system performed the best in degrading PFOA and PFOS.  The results were surprisingly favorable, to the degree that Selma had never seen such performance in any of the plasma reactors she had previously tested in her 14 years of plasma research. The team was highly skeptical about the measurements as Tom and Chris both thought PFAS were virtually indestructible. They repeated the experiment multiple times, always with the same result…rapid removal which proved to themselves the results were real.

What followed was additional funded research, and ultimately the formation of DMAX Plasma as a limited liability company in 2014 for the purposes of commercializing the technology.  Development has continued ever since, successfully treating PFAS contaminated waters, adding to our team and increasing throughput capacity.