Masaaki Hosomi

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
(2-24-16, Nakamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan)

Abstract

Long-term storage of wastes containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which is one of the priority persistent organic pollutants (POPs), increases the risk of environmental contamination. This paper first describes how chemical decomposition technologies of PCBs have recently been noted as alternatives of incineration. Secondly several chemical decomposition technologies, which were demonstrated to be very effective for treatment of oil containing PCBs, have been outlined. Because most of these technologies are based on chemical dechlorination reactions under alkaline and anaerobic conditions, they are suggested to be applicable to the decomposition of dioxins and organochlorine pesticides. Actually it was demonstrated that the base catalyzed decomposition (BCD) process, which is one of the chemical decomposition technologies, could dechlorinate dioxins and organochlorine pesticides as well as PCBs.

Key words: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), persistentorganicpollutants (POPs), chemicalde-composition, dechlorination