Thermal decomposition studies on a chemical warfare agent (CWA) simulant was performed using a custom built pyrolyzer. The goals of this study were to design, build and evaluate a simple pyrolyzer to meet the safety and security requirements necessary to obtain consistent CWA and CWA simulant pyrolysis data from multiple laboratories around the world. A custom made tubular flow reactor was built, the pyrolysis effluent was collected on solid sorbent tubes, and was analyzed by thermal desorption (TD) gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Experiments were conducted with triethyl phosphate (TEP), a well-studied CWA simulant, to determine the activation energy (E_a) and rate constant (k) for the unimolecular decomposition of TEP under the designed experimental conditions and to validate pyrolyzer performance. Experiments with TEP were conducted at five different temperatures (375 – 440 °C) with samples collected at five flow rates. The activation energy for TEP decomposition was determined to be 32.0 ± 7.6 kcal/mol which is consistent with previous reported literature data.

使用定制的热解器对化学战剂（CWA）模拟物进行热分解研究。这项研究的目的是设计，建造和评估一个简单的热解炉，以满足从全球多个实验室获得一致的CWA和CWA模拟热解数据所必需的安全性要求。建立定制的管式流动反应器，将热解流出物收集在固体吸附剂管上，并通过热脱附（TD）气相色谱/质谱（GC / MS）进行分析。对磷酸三乙酯（TEP）（一种经过充分研究的CWA模拟剂）进行了实验，以确定活化能（E _a）和速率常数（k）在设计的实验条件下进行TEP的单分子分解，并验证热解器的性能。在五种不同的温度（375 – 440°C）下进行TEP实验，并以五种流速收集样品。TEP分解的活化能确定为32.0±7.6 kcal / mol，与先前报道的文献数据一致。