Portable lab can eliminate stockpiles of chemical weapons

New Scientist : In February 2012, the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency asked the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) in Maryland to prototype an easily deployable system for destroying chemical weapon agents. In June, the ECBC revealed the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS), which has now been adopted for use by the Pentagon. The system pumps chemical agents into an 8330-liter tank and breaks the chemicals into fragments through a reaction with the water, a process called hydrolysis . The process has been used for the elimination of US chemical weapon stockpiles since the 1990s but only in large, static plants. The FDHS can be deployed and set up in 10 days, and run by a staff of 15. Once set up, it can process 5–25 tons of chemicals per day, depending on the type of chemical. The resulting wastewater can then be disposed of by standard hazardous materials facilities. However, the system is only designed for use with bulk storage containers. Munitions that have been supplied with chemical agents require other procedures to extract and neutralize the chemicals.