Destruction of chemical warfare surrogates using a portable atmospheric pressure plasma jet

Abstract

Today's reality is connected with mitigation of threats from the new chemical and biological warfare agents. A novel investigation of cold plasmas in contact with liquids presented in this paper demonstrated that the chemically reactive environment produced by atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) is potentially capable of rapid destruction of chemical warfare agents in a broad spectrum. The decontamination of three different chemical warfare agent surrogates dissolved in liquid is investigated by using an easily transportable APPJ. The jet is powered by a kHz signal source connected to a low-voltage DC source and with He as working gas. The detailed investigation of electrical properties is performed for various plasmas at different distances from the sample. The measurements of plasma properties in-situ are supported by the optical spectrometry measurements, whereas the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) measurements before and after the treatment of aqueous solutions of Malathion, Fenitrothion and Dimetyl MetylPhosphonate. These soloutions are used to evaluate destruction and its efficiency for specific neural agent simulants. The particular removal rates are found to be from 56% up to 96% during 10 min treatment. The data obtained provide basis to evaluate APPJ's efficiency at different operating conditions. The presented results are promising and could be improved with different operating conditions and optimisation of the decontamination process.

Experimental and theoretical cross sections for elastic electron scattering from zinc

“…The atomic, molecular, and optical physics scattering community has, for some time now, been endeavoring to compile accurate and complete cross-section data bases [26] for scattering systems relevant to simulating charged-particle behavior in, for example, electron swarm systems [27][28][29] and radiation damage in matter [30][31][32], and for understanding the role of electron-driven processes in planetary atmospheres [33,34]. The importance of elastic-scattering cross sections, which do not deposit energy in the background medium or excite states leading to photon emission that can be analyzed for diagnostic purposes [35], has probably been somewhat undervalued by that community.…”

“…The importance of elastic-scattering cross sections, which do not deposit energy in the background medium or excite states leading to photon emission that can be analyzed for diagnostic purposes [35], has probably been somewhat undervalued by that community. In fact, by allowing for anisotropy in electron swarm transport through the momentum transfer cross section [27][28][29] and, through the elastic differential cross sections (DCSs) [30][31][32], looking at the dispersion of the electrons as they travel through the body, the elasticscattering process is crucial for a quantitative description of those phenomena. This forms a further allied rationale for this paper.…”

Direct and Indirect Treatment of Organic Dye (Acid Blue 25) Solutions by Using Cold Atmospheric Plasma Jet

“…In recent years, cold atmospheric plasma (also known as nonthermal or non-equilibrium plasma) has gained attention and proven to be an alternative tool for the oxidation of organic contaminants from water due to the abundant production of reactive species without addition of chemicals and increment of ambient temperature [22][23][24][25][26]. Cold atmospheric plasma is an electrically conductive gas and multi-component system of high-energy electrons, and reactive species, negative and positive ions, neutrals, metastables with thermal energies, and photons of different wavelengths [27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…Plasma in contact with liquid has been demonstrated by many researchers to be suitable for the successful treatment of various organic pollutants, such as organic dyes [25,36,37], pharmaceuticals [21,38], pesticides [39,40], and so on. Plasma interacts with liquid leading to the formation of several reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS): HO, O, H 2 O 2 , NO, ONOOH, O 3 , etc., that proved to be highly effective in the elimination of a high range of organic pollutants from water [13,19,26,[41][42][43].…”

Cold atmospheric plasma technology for removal of organic micropollutants from wastewater—a review

“…Apart from other approaches for the realization of AOPs, nowadays, cold plasma-based oxidation techniques have gained a lot of interest. It is shown that this type of plasma can be used to degrade a variety of toxic OMPs in water such as pharmaceuticals, organic dyes, pesticides [30,[73][74][75][76]. Cold plasma is responsible for the formation of many reactive oxygen species (e.g.…”