Pretreatment method for BX24 Decon water of HD, VX and GD before GC analysis

Abstract Chlorine-based decontaminant BX24 is effective for the decontamination of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) VX, GD and HD. In this paper, main factors affecting the agent recovery from decontamination water (decon water) were studied, a pretreatment method was subsequently developed for GC analysis of residual chemical warfare agents in BX24 decon water. Results showed that dichloromethane was the most suitable extractant, especially for sample of VX and GD. Neutralization process should be done to obtain a high recovery, especially for samples under low CWAs concentration and samples with high speed of CWAs degradation like HD decon water. When optimized neutralizer of sodium sulfite or sodium thiosulfate and extractant of dichloromethane were used, where neutralization and extraction were done simultaneously, a recovery above 85% could be obtained for BX24 decon water. The appropriate CWAs concentration ranged from 20 mg/l to 10000 mg/l.