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Suggested Citation:"Chemical Oxidation." National Research Council. 1993. Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2218.
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Page 123

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LOW-TEMPERATURE, LIQUID-PHASE PROCESSES 123 shells, land mines, and rocket warheads, that contain agent and therefore could potentially detoxify agent before removal from the weapon. Treaty requirements for demilitarization will likely require a high level of detoxification and also disassembly and destruction of the weapon. It is unclear whether the technique described here offers advantages over the currently planned disassembly and detoxification sequence in which very large quantities of agent must be greatly detoxified. This alternative technique could, however, offer some potential for managing small numbers of found weapons when transportation to a central demilitarization facility is prohibited. LOW-TEMPERATURE AND LOW-PRESSURE OXIDATION PROCESSES The preceding discussion of detoxification was limited to systems that accomplish this goal by breaking such specific chemical bonds as P—S and C—Cl, thus destroying the structure and consequently the extreme toxicity of chemical warfare agents. Although such processes destroy the military utility and major risks of agent release during continued storage, further conversion may be required to meet the irreversibility criterion of the Chemical Weapons Convention (see Chapter 1). Ideally, the remaining material should then be completely oxidized, with all carbon converted to CO2, carbonates, or other innocuous carbon forms for final disposal. This section discusses possible methods for achieving this step under low-temperature and low-pressure conditions. These methods are also generally capable of detoxifying agent (some have been mentioned in preceding sections). All these methods rely on oxygen-containing compounds that have demonstrated significant oxidation ability at low temperatures (up to 100°C). For oxidation of the more refractory residues, most of these oxidizing agents require an additional source of energy to increase reactivity at such low temperatures. Relevant research on ultraviolet (UV) radiation used for the treatment of contaminated water is discussed below, as is research on active species electrochemically generated with molecular oxygen. Biochemical oxidation, which is of interest for the oxidation of detoxified organic mixtures, is discussed in a final section. Chemical Oxidation Some chemical oxidizing agents of interest include peroxydisulfate salts, organic peroxy compounds, chlorine dioxide, H2O2, and ozone. The ongoing battlefield decontamination studies mentioned earlier, and the very active

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The U.S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program was established with the goal of destroying the nation's stockpile of lethal unitary chemical weapons. Since 1990 the U.S. Army has been testing a baseline incineration technology on Johnston Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Under the planned disposal program, this baseline technology will be imported in the mid to late 1990s to continental United States disposal facilities; construction will include eight stockpile storage sites.

In early 1992 the Committee on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies was formed by the National Research Council to investigate potential alternatives to the baseline technology. This book, the result of its investigation, addresses the use of alternative destruction technologies to replace, partly or wholly, or to be used in addition to the baseline technology. The book considers principal technologies that might be applied to the disposal program, strategies that might be used to manage the stockpile, and combinations of technologies that might be employed.

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