ChemSec Says PFAS Producers Are Expanding Capacity for Data Centers and Chips

The search for alternatives to water-based cooling is creating a different materials problem. Some newer data-center systems use fluorinated chemicals containing PFAS, and ChemSec says major producers are expanding capacity as demand rises from data centers and semiconductor manufacturing.

PFAS are highly resistant to heat, a property that makes them useful in cooling equipment, industrial machinery and semiconductor manufacturing. They also do not easily degrade. That persistence is at the center of environmental and health concerns surrounding the chemicals, often called forever chemicals.

The reported capacity push is not solely a response to server cooling. ChemSec’s findings identify three main sources of demand: data-center cooling, semiconductor manufacturing and lithium-ion battery materials. That distinction matters because the growth in PFAS production is tied to several industrial markets at once, even as AI infrastructure adds another buyer.

The companies ChemSec names

• Chemours: ChemSec’s SIN Producers database identifies it as producing or using more PFAS substances than any other company on the database’s list.
• Daikin: named among the producers expanding capacity, with its tripling plan linked to semiconductor demand.
• Arkema: also named by ChemSec among producers increasing PFAS capacity amid data-center and semiconductor demand.

ChemSec estimates that PFAS production accounts for between half and two-thirds of Chemours’s $5.8 billion in revenue. The estimate is not a company-reported revenue breakdown, but it underscores the existing commercial weight of PFAS for a producer that ChemSec ranks highest in its database by number of substances produced or used.

Data-center construction is growing quickly: a BOMA study cited by Fortune found the facilities represented nearly 46% of private construction in the prior year, up from less than 5% a decade earlier. ChemSec’s findings add a materials question to the better-known debate over water use: shifting cooling away from water can increase demand for chemicals designed to persist.