Decontamination of military paint systems in a controlled environment : decontamination with two different decontamination systems : evaporation behaviour of sulphur mustard and soman at different temperatures

This study continues work done in 1998-2000 on large-scale decontamination, and has been performed in two parts. In part 1, decontamination trials were performed on three different paint systems. Painted plates were contaminated with soman and after 3 hours decontamination was performed using foam (CASCAD) or emulsion (E-2000). The overall decontamination effectiveness is 100 % also when only rinsing with water is done. Residual amounts before decontamination were lower than 1 % of original amounts. This made determination of the effectiveness of the decontamination chemicals impossible. Future work of this type should have a well-defined question and/or the methodology should be adjusted. In part 2, the evaporation behaviour of sulphur mustard and soman were investigated using four paint systems at +30oC, +5oC and -12oC. The rate of evaporation is dependent on physical properties of the agent (volatility, melting point) and interactions with the painted surface (the spreading of the drop). The impact of the parameters varies with temperature. The variation in evaporation rate depending on agent, temperature and paint system is large. The variation within the same paint system can be significant. This makes it impossible to use evaporation as a defined method of decontamination.