Initially, the U.S. Army proposed to dispose of these materials by incineration. The technologies for disposal of CWAs, all begin with chemical neutralization using a strong caustic solution.
Caustic solution causes the rapid hydrolysis of the CWAs to form various degradation products.
Analytical methods for the determination of CWAs in caustic solutions needed to be developed and validated. The agents required detection in a range of fluid configurations. Argonne evaluated the range of conditions, developed test matrices, and optimized the methodology. Each method was tailored for the agent and the matrix being sampled. Analytical methods were validated to meet U.S. Army quality assurance requirements.