Research progress in photocatalytic degradation of chemical warfare agents

Abstract

The rapid development of photocatalytic technology has attracted attention in the field of decontamination of chemical agents (CWAs). Owing to high-efficiency, broad-spectrum, and environmentally friendly features, photocatalytic technology can overcome many problems encountered by traditional decontamination technology, such as the problem of soil corrosion, and is suitable for the degradation of CWAs. Researchers have conducted a lot of researches on this, and there are also related reviews to discuss in detail the mechanism and application of photocatalytic degradation of CWAs. However, there are many pieces of literature on traditional photocatalytic materials, and few have summarized the mechanism and application of new photocatalytic materials in the degradation of CWAs. Therefore, in this paper, the mechanism of photocatalytic degradation of CWAs, species of photocatalytic materials, the application of photocatalytic degradation of CWAs, especially the researches of new photocatalytic materials, such as metal-organic frameworks, degradation agents were summarized in detail. Photocatalytic technology has advantages over other technologies in the treatment of low-concentration, refractory CWAs. However, the research is still in the laboratory stage and is mostly simulated agent experiments. There are still obstacles when applied to the degradation of real CWAs. In the future, wearable photocatalytic protective materials may be worthy of further research. At the same time, photocatalytic technology has proved to have certain potential in the large-scale destruction of poisons.

Keywords

• degradation
• photocatalysis
• chemical warfare agents
• titanium dioxide
• metal-organic fram-ework