FRANCIS W. HOLM 30 Agua Sarca Road, Placitas, New Mexico 1. Overview The
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sponsored an Advanced Research
in Prague, Czech Republic, on October 13-15, 1997, to collect and
Workshop (ARW) study information on effluents from alternative
demilitarization technologies and to report on these fmdings. The
effluents, orprocess residues, identified for assessment at the workshop
are generated by systems that have been proposed as alternatives to
incineration technology for destruction of munitions, chemical warfare
agent, and associated materials and debris. The alternative technologies
analyzed are grouped into three categories based on process bulk
operating temperature: low (0-200 C), medium (200-600 C), and high
(600-3,500 C). Reaction types considered include hydrolysis,
biodegradation, electrochemical oxidation, gas-phase high-temperature
reduction, steam reforming, gasification, sulfur reactions, solvated
electron chemistry, sodium reactions, supercritical water oxidation, wet
air oxidation, and plasma torch technology. These ofprocesses, some of
which have been studied categories represent a broad spectrum only in
the laboratory and some of which are in commercial use for destruction
of hazardous and toxic wastes. Some technologies have been developed and
used for specific commercial applications; however, in all cases,
research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) is necessary to
assure that each technology application is effective for destroying
chemical warfare materiel. Table 1 contains a list of more than 40
technologies from a recent report for the U.S. Army [1]. Many ofthe
technologies in Table 1 are based on similar principles.