Destruction of halogenated organics with hydrothermal processing

Chemical reactions in high temperature water (hydrothermal processing) allow new avenues for effective waste treatment and radionuclide separation. Successful implementation of hydrothermal technologies offers the potential to effectively treat many types of radioactive waste and reduce the storage hazards and the disposal costs, while minimizing the generation of hazardous secondary waste streams.1–5 Halogenated hazardous organic liquids containing actinides are a difficult to treat category of TRU radioactive wastes. These liquids are typically used for degreasing operations or density measurements and can include trichlorethylene and bromobenzene. Experiments have demonstrated that hydrothermal processes can eliminate hazardous halogenated organics generated by the nuclear industry by the complete oxidation of the organic components to CO2 and H2O.