Regular Article

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

¹ Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia
² Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”, University of Belgrade, Bul. despota Stefana 142, 11060 Belgrade, Serbia
³ Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova cesta 39, Ljubljana 1000, Slovenia
⁴ Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Knez Mihailova 35, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

^a e-mail: nskoro@ipb.ac.rs

Received: 10 May 2017
Received in final form: 31 October 2017
Published online: 16 January 2018

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 measurements before and after the treatment of aqueous solutions of Malathion, Fenitrothion and Dimethyl Methylphosphonate. These solutions 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 optimization of the decontamination process.