Chlorine Dioxide

Chlorine dioxide is generated from aqueous liquids container alkali metal or alkaline earth metal chlorites, and compounds which liberate chlorine in water. Dry, stable, solid compositions, in one or two parts, can be made from these and other ingredients.

The compound chlorine dioxide (ClO2), now commercially important, is not in fact a recent discovery. The gas was first produced by Humphrey Davy in 1811 when reacting hydrochloric acid with potassium chlorate. This yielded "euchlorine", as it was then termed. Watt and Burgess, who invented alkaline pulp bleaching in 1834, mentioned euchlorine as a bleaching agent in their first patent. Chlorine dioxide then became well known as a bleach and later a disinfectant.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC) Technology Testing and Evaluation Program (TTEP) helps to protect human health and the environment from adverse impacts of terrorist acts by carrying out performance tests on homeland security technologies. TTEP recently evaluated the performance of liquid and foam decontamination technologies under vendor-specified application conditions to decontaminate test coupons prepared from the materials listed below.