Syensqo Ramps Up PFAS Output for Data Centers and AI

Belgian specialty chemicals multinational Syensqo is scaling up production of PFAS - the persistent “forever chemicals” - to meet surging demand from data centers, the artificial-intelligence industry, semiconductors and electric-vehicle batteries, according to VRT NWS. The expansion places a Belgian company among the world’s ten largest PFAS producers at a moment when the European Union is preparing a landmark restriction on the substances.

The move was highlighted by a ChemSec report published on 13 September 2026, which found that most of the world’s leading PFAS manufacturers are expanding capacity rather than phasing out the chemicals.

A company built on the Solvay split

Syensqo, headquartered in Brussels, was spun off from Belgian chemicals group Solvay in December 2023, inheriting a large share of Solvay’s fluorochemical operations. With annual revenue of $6.8 billion, the company manufactures 18 PFAS substances and appears on ChemSec’s list of the world’s top ten producers, where companies are ordered alphabetically rather than ranked. ChemSec nonetheless labels its PFAS dependency “high”: fluoropolymers account for more than one-third of its business.

Two products dominate its expansion. The first is PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride), marketed as Solef, which is used in EV battery binders and in semiconductor and AI-chip manufacturing. The second is PFPE (perfluoropolyether), a fluid used to cool servers through immersion cooling - submerging hardware in a liquid with a lower boiling point than water, saving both water and energy.

Syensqo has announced plans for a battery-grade PVDF plant in Augusta, Georgia, and received a $178 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the facility, which ChemSec describes as the largest of its kind in North America. But the project is now in doubt. In a correction published on 21 September 2026, VRT NWS reported that Syensqo has revised the Georgia plans because demand from the electric-vehicle market developed more slowly than expected, and that the company would not say whether - or when - the plant will still be built.

Environmental questions around AI cooling

Syensqo told VRT NWS that it has invested in PFPE production at its plant in Spinetta Marengo, Italy, while noting that it has phased PFAS out of some production processes - a step for which ChemSec gives it credit. The company argues that PFPE used in immersion cooling operates in a closed system, meaning the chemical should not escape into the environment.

Critics question how conclusive that reassurance is. In gaseous form, such substances contribute to problems: leaks in refrigerators and air conditioners are a major source of fluorinated greenhouse-gas emissions that drive global warming. In liquid form, if cooling circuits are not properly dismantled, PFAS break down only very slowly.

“The data center industry knows it is under fire for its enormous water use,” said Lenny Siegel, a board member of Chips Communities United, in comments published by The Guardian, which VRT NWS cited. “That’s why companies try to portray themselves as the good guys by using alternative forms of cooling. But they don’t tell the public that they use dangerous chemicals. Some are toxic, some are greenhouse gases, and some are both.”

An industry-wide race for AI demand

Syensqo is far from alone. Japan’s Daikin plans to more than triple its fluoropolymer production capacity by 2027 in response to semiconductor demand, ChemSec reports. Chemours, the world’s largest PFAS producer, has developed a new PFAS called Opteon 2P50, marketed as a product that will “revolutionise” data-center cooling, and is hoping for fast-tracked approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. U.S. manufacturer Solstice told investors in June that strong AI demand represents a “generational opportunity.”

The regulatory backdrop differs sharply on each side of the Atlantic. Euronews reported that the European Chemicals Agency backed a wide-ranging PFAS restriction in March 2026. Its Risk Assessment Committee concluded that PFAS pose persistent and potentially severe risks to health and the environment, while its Socio-Economic Analysis Committee stressed the need for targeted exemptions where industries lack viable alternatives.

“An EU-wide restriction is, therefore, an effective measure to reduce these risks,” said Roberto Scazzola, chairperson of ECHA’s risk-assessment committee. The European Commission is expected to decide whether to turn the recommendations into law by the end of 2026.

In the United States, by contrast, The New Lede reported that the Trump administration has embraced “PFAS Out” rhetoric while approving new PFAS pesticides, scrapping a Biden-era scientific review of PFAS in sewage sludge, and proposing to rescind drinking-water limits for four PFAS. A Trump executive order provides expedited review for chemicals used for AI and data centers - potentially accelerating approval of new products such as Chemours’ Opteon 2P50.

In July 2026, 17 environmental organizations submitted formal comments urging the EPA to reject fast-tracking that chemical, citing severe risks to health and the environment. “If EPA were to approve this new chemical without some stringent restriction… it can be used for anything,” said Adriana Antezana, a staff scientist at Earthjustice.

Belgium’s fraught PFAS history

The expansion lands in a country still confronting the consequences of PFAS contamination. An investigation by RTBF and its U.S. partners documented how Solvay acquired a 97-hectare plant in West Deptford, New Jersey, in 1990 and had released more than 45 tonnes of the PFAS molecule PFNA into the surrounding air and water by the time it stopped using the substance in 2010. Residents only discovered the contamination in 2013, with drinking-water concentrations in nearby Paulsboro at times 15 times above the threshold later validated by the EPA.

In 2023, without admitting liability, Solvay agreed to pay $394 million for natural-resource damages and groundwater monitoring. EPA scientists have since discovered previously unknown, third-generation PFAS generated as by-products during PVDF manufacturing - substances that can appear even when none are intentionally added.

Closer to home, a large blood study near the 3M plant in Zwijndrecht found in March 2025 that half of the adult participants had too much PFAS in their blood, with the Department of Care warning that long-term health effects could not be ruled out. Cleanup costs have been estimated at up to 6.2 billion euros per year in the worst-case scenario, and in one in four Flemish drinking-water samples PFAS exceeds the strictest EU standards.

Not every company is expanding. Germany’s BASF plans to phase out all PFAS production by 2028, Switzerland’s Archroma is developing PFAS-free alternatives, and 3M completed its exit from PFAS manufacturing at the end of 2025 - though it still makes thousands of products containing the chemicals and faces roughly 4,000 active PFAS-related legal cases.

What to watch

The coming months will test whether Europe’s regulatory ambition can keep pace with an industry racing to supply the AI boom. A key open question is whether the EU restriction will carve out derogations for semiconductors, AI infrastructure and data centers - sectors that fluoropolymers currently serve with no credible substitutes at scale. Equally uncertain is the fate of Syensqo’s own flagship U.S. project: the company has invested in PVDF and PFPE capacity on both sides of the Atlantic, yet now declines to say when - or whether - its largest planned North American plant will materialise. How its “closed-system” cooling claims hold up in practice, once equipment is dismantled and circuits leak, may prove just as decisive for a company betting its growth on the digital age’s appetite for forever chemicals.