Pretreatment Method for Peroxides Decon Water Before GC Analysis of HD, VX, and GD

Abstract

Peroxides like sodium percarbonate (SPC) and sodium percarbonate-acetylsalicylic acid (SPC-Aspirin) can be used to destroy chemical warfare agents (CWAs) such as HD, VX and GD due to the former's oxidation capacity and nucleophilicity. In this paper, experiments were performed to study factors affecting CWAs recovery from peroxides decontaminant water (decon water) and develop the method to recover residual CWAs from peroxides decon water before GC analysis. Results showed that extraction solvent and neutralization were important for high CWA recovery. DCM was more suitable than PE as extractant for most samples except SPC decon water containing HD. Sodium sulfite could well neutralized decontaminant reactivity in decon water. When suitable conditions of simultaneous neutralization and extraction were carried, CWAs recovery from SPC decon water were greater than 90% at a concentration range of 10 mg l-1 to 10000 mg l-1, the recovery of HD, VX and GD from SPC-Aspirin decon water was more than 90%, 80% and 95% respectively at a concentration range of 100 mg l-1 to 10000 mg l-1, while CWAs recovery were relatively lower from SPC-Aspirin decon water with CWAs concentration of 10 mg l-1 due to the degradation of CWAs during pretreatment processes.