Estudio del comportamiento de mostazas de azufre pesadas frente a descontaminantes comerciales

Resum

This Doctoral Thesis pursues the evaluation of the efficiency of commercial decontaminants against heavy sulfur mustards, the development of procedures for sample preparation to accomplish the analyses of the product contained in the matrices derived from the decontaminating agents using GC-based techniques, and, finally the characterization of the main degradation products derived from the decontamination reactions using mass spectrometry techniques.In all cases, the heavy mustards were prepared and used without further purification to mimic a real scenario. The presence of by-products in the decontamination reactions of the unpurified vesicants could be used then as fingerprints in a forensic investigation. The identification of these chemicals could establish, in principle, a link between the chemical agent and the terrorist group in base of the synthetic methodology performed. The purity of the heavy mustards was always above 75%.The efficiency of the decontamination process depends on the organic or aqueous nature decontaminant as well as the length of the aliphatic chain of the sulfur vesicant. The solubility of the CWA in the decontamination media is a critical factor in the efficiency of the decontamination process. In all cases, organic-base decontaminants (DS2, GD5, GD6 and GDS2000) were more efficient than water-based decontaminants (RM21, RM31, RM35, BX24, BX29 and BX40) to degrade heavy sulfur mustards...