The NY Times reports that 1300 tons of mustard gas and the raw materials for sarin are being shipped out to sea, to be destroyed by a Field Deployable Hydrolysis System.
My question is, after the material is processed, are the end products going to be dumped into the sea? If so, what exactly are the end products and how much will there be?
A link would’ve been helpful - here’s one from The Australian
Basically a FDHS cooks hazardous chemicals with water, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl). The resulting chemicals are then stored and allowed to cool and then treated as general hazardous waste.
I found the following document related to FDHS and a never gas precoursor (EMPTA) from the ORGANISATION FOR THE PROHIBITION OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Time for some Highly Suspicious Early Morning google searches!
Apparently, the major products of mustard gas hydrolysis are thiodiglycol and thiodiglycol sulfoxide. Thiodiglycol has very low acute toxicity. On first google, I can’t find good data specific for the sulfoxide.
ETA: Apparently hydrolysis by a different process than the OP references!
Morning reading comprehension is hard. Grey refers to hydrolysis of EMPTA. Again, hydrolysis (just with heat in water) of mustard gas does produce thiodiglycol and its sulfate. If I’m remembering my chemistry correctly, sodium hydroxide will only accelerate the hydrolysis. Sodium hypochlorite (bleach) will oxidize things further, but off the top of my head I don’t know what products would come of that.
Quick Syrian Chemical Weapons/OPCW link –> Syria and the OPCW | OPCW
Thiodiglycol seems dangerous… not just something to throw into the ground.
In fact Thiodiglycol is a precursor to mustard gas ! … There’s a reason they store it in a highly alkaline environment !. Thiodiglycol is mustard gas that has only been hydrolyzed, as in the Cl replaced with OH… The Industrial process for converting Thiodiglycol to mustard gas uses deadly poisons (eg phosgene ), but thats only to make it the most efficient and effective…
Just adding HCl will make mustard gas from Thiodiglycol, surely…
It seems to me that simply acidifying Thiodiglycol with HCl would return it back to mustard gas.