Low-Temperature Microwave Catalyisis to Destroy Chemical Warfare Agents from Air Streams

Ventilation systems are extremely venerable to incidental and malicious attacks by terrorists and saboteurs. During attacks by chemical and biological weapons, personnel in temporary and permanent shelters are dependent on a constant supply of clean air. Consequently, the main objective of the proposed work is to develop a microwave low-temperature catalytic oxidation system that will effectively decontaminate air containing aerosolized or gaseous chemical agents (CWAs). In order to protect personnel in shelters, the catalytic oxidation systems should (1) destroy CWAs in air at low temperatures to avoid NOx formation, (2) remove sulfur dioxide produced from the oxidation of CWAs containing sulfur atoms, (3) operate for an indefinite period of time, and (4) destroy biological agents at low temperatures. The experimental results obtained during the Phase I work will clearly demonstrate that the microwave decontamination process is capable of destroying greater than 90% of organics containing 3% or more of phosphorous and separately, of sulfur from flowing air at a residence time one second or less for at least 30 minutes. A prototype microwave air decontamination system will be constructed and tested during the Phase II work to demonstrate the effectiveness of the microwave air decontamination system.