In the event of a terrorist attack with chemical warfare agents (CWAs), large quantities of materials, both indoor and outdoor, may be treated with thermal incineration during the site remediation process. CWAs in general are not particularly thermally stable and decompose readily in a high temperature combustion environment. Potential difficulties exist, however, in thermally processing waste materials from a post-CWA event site remediation due to the refractory nature of many materials found inside and outside buildings, and the potential impacts that waste packaging at the site may have on the behavior of these materials and residual agent destruction in combustion systems. This paper reports on a study to examine the thermal decomposition of surrogate CWAs and formation of decomposition by-products bound in model building materials (in this case, ceiling tile) in a pilot-scale rotary kiln incinerator simulator. Initial efforts were directed at modeling the behavior of CWAs bound on ceiling tile in a pilot-scale incinerator. Residues from a CWA cleanup would probably be sent to a hazardous waste incinerator.
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