Bio-Treatment of Energetic Materials Using White-Rot Fungus

The nitramine explosive, octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX), is used by militaries around the world in high yield munitions and often in combination with hexahydro- 1,3,5-trirdtro- 1,3,5- triazine (RDX). Improper handling and disposal of manufacturing wastewater may lead to environmental contamination. In the past wastewater was collected in disposal lagoons where it evaporated, and deposited large amounts of explosives on the lagoon floor. Although lagoon disposal is no longer practiced, thousands of acres have been already contaminated. RDX and, to a lesser extent, HMX have leached through the soil subsurface and contaminated groundwater ( 1,2). Likewjse, burning of substandard material or demilitarization of out-of-date muriitions has also led to environmental contamination. The current stockpile of energetic materials at DOE sites requires resource recovery or disposition (RRD). A related challenge exists in the clean-up of the DOE sites where soil and ground water are contaminated with explosives. Current technologies such as incineration, molten salt process, supercritical water oxidation are expensive and have technical hurdles. Open burning and open detonation(OB/OD) is not encouraged by regulatory agencies for disposal of explosives. Hence, there is need for a safe . technology to degrade these contaminants. The fi.mgal process does not employ open burning or open detonation to destroy energetic materials. The fimgal process can be used by itself, or it can augment or support other technologies for the treatment of energetic materials. The proposed enzyme technology will not release any air pollutants and will meet the regulations of Clean Air Act amendments, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Federal. Facilities Compliance Act. The goal for this project was to test the ability of white-rot fungus to degrade HMX. In our study, we investigated the biodegradation of HMX using white-rot fungus in liquid and solid cultures. The degradation of HMX was studied at 1, 10, 100 and 1000 ppm levels. In all cases, HMX was degraded. In general, the rate of degradation of HMX increased with increase in HMX concentration. Because of encouraging findings, further optimization of this method and eventual field testing of this technology is recommended. This research was pefiormed in collaboration with Utah State University