The military is engaged in searching for economical ways to reactivate their chem suits so they don't have to dispose of them and have apparently had some success. You can't access the full document on the net, but here is the abstract for methods of reactivating activated carbon clothing.
In the near future, chemical protective combat uniforms may be worn by Army personnel on a continuous basis. Activated carbon, the operative component, has diminished capacity for sorbing chemical agents after it has been exposed to dirt, sweat, cigarette smoke, engine exhaust, petroleum products and numerous other elements routinely present in the battlefield environment. This report summarizes the development of two nondestructive methods for cleaning and reactivating soiled chemical protective garments.
Complete reactivation was achieved when the aqueous i-propanol iodine displacement method of Manes, which removed all but pure hydrocarbon oil soils from the current overgarment Type III foam or Kynol activated carbon fiber material, was applied in nonaqueous solvent.
Subsequently, a nonaqueous solvent method that requires less handling was chosen in designing a truck-mounted system. It features non-agitative flow of methylene chloride and methanol around the chemical-protective garments suspended between ultrasonic transducers.
Both methods restore full sorptivity to the Type III foam liner. There is a one-time 10% loss of activated carbon without any loss of sorptivity. The volatile solvents are more easily removed, and can be economically recovered.
I don't know about y'all, but I'm fresh out of i-propynol iodine, methylene chloride, methanol and ultrasonic transducers, and who knows what the non-aqueous solvent was that they used. Odd that clothes dryers don't appear on the list, huh.
