Cleaning solution

A portable, microwave-based device that could destroy chemical warfare agents and other hazardous materials is being developed by a UK engineering team.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have been awarded more than £250,000 in EPSRC funding to design a microwave-based system that can continuously generate supercritical water — a high-pressure, high-temperature form of water that can be used to dissolve hazardous organic materials.

The team, from the university’s school of chemical, environmental and mining engineering, hopes the ambitious project will also unlock further applications for supercritical fluids.

Under the application of heat and pressure, all fluids have a critical point at which they are no longer gas or liquid, but somewhere in between.

The project’s leader, Dr Edward Lester, said water is unusual because at the supercritical point its properties undergo a dramatic shift. It changes from being a polar solvent that won’t dissolve organics to being a nonpolar medium in which organic materials are readily dissolved.