Catalysis and decontamination: a versatile tool in the safe and sustainable degradation of chemical warfare agents

Abstract

Decontamination is a critical and enabling capability to mitigate and, in the best cases, neutralize the threat of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) to human health and the environment. Well-established conventional decontamination methods will be described and compared to more recent approaches based on catalytic degradation, in the presence of nanostructured catalysts or enzymatic systems, photochemical and photocatalytic abatement and active adsorption on high-performance innovative porous solid
materials.