• Provides treatment efficiency trends for PFAS removal strategies from 2015 to 2025. • Shows the strengths and limits of adsorption, membranes, and hybrid systems. • Assesses damaging PFAS cleanup strategies and their scalability issues. • Demonstrates how surface charge, matrix effects, and contaminant type affect PFAS adsorption. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) rank among the most persistent environmental contaminants of the twenty-first century because of their high mobility, bioaccumulation potential, and resistance to degradation. Their stable carbon–fluorine bonds, extensive industrial use, and toxicity have caused widespread contamination of water, soil, biota, and humans. From 2015 to 2025, stricter regulations and improved analytical detection methods accelerated research on PFAS removal and destruction technologies. This review compares non-destructive separation approaches (adsorption, membrane filtration, and ion exchange) with destructive techniques (electrochemical oxidation, advanced reduction processes, thermal treatment, and hybrid systems). Adsorption remains the dominant method worldwide and especially in low-resource settings; conventional and modified carbonaceous materials achieve 80-95% removal of long-chain PFAS, while nanoscale and chemically tailored sorbents extend efficacy to short-chain compounds. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis deliver rejection rates above 90% for most PFAS but generate concentrated waste streams that require downstream management. Despite these advances, major geographical imbalances persist, and Africa continues to be underrepresented in PFAS monitoring, treatment trials, and regulatory development, even as contamination data and region-specific exposure routes accumulate. This review synthesizes global PFAS remediation progress over the decade between 2015 and 2025, with focused analysis of the African context and associated research gaps. Publication output on the topic grew from fewer than 200 papers in 2015 to more than 1,200 in 2025, while identifying approximately 35 PFAS compounds across the continent, revealing both technological maturation and the urgent need for scalable, low-cost solutions suited to African infrastructure and regulatory realities.
Mbanga et al. (Sun,) studied this question.