Aerosol mineralization of chlorofluorocarbons by sodium vapor reduction

This paper describes a new method for the destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The process consists of mixing vapor-phase CFCs and sodium at atmospheric pressure in an exothermic single-pass process leading to the mineralization of the carbon and halogen components. The process has demonstrated high destruction efficiencies for a surrogate CFC (CF4) as well as high efficiency for the formation of the equilibrium-predicted products of reaction: benign salt-coated carbon aerosols, large enough to be filtered with existing filtering technologies, with no volatile products. The rapidity of the chemistry and condensation process and the low cost of sodium should enable the construction of industrial-scale reactors that are fairly small and economical to build and operate. The application of this chemistry would be toward destruction of CFC stockpiles and as a treatment of the effluent of plasma reactors used in semiconductor processing.