Revealing how America destroys deadly chemical weapons

Somewhere between the Atlantic, military and civilian experts are on a US cargo ship that is destroying Syria's deadly chemical arsenal, including the chemicals needed to produce it. Sarin neurotoxin, which was used to kill 1,500 Syrian civilians last year.

>>> Howare Syrian chemical weapons "dissected"?

Much of Syria's chemical arsenal has gone to Finland, Britain and the United States, where government contractors have been spending months to destroy nearly 1,300 tons of chemicals. The number of these weapons destroyed according to the regulations set by the banned chemical weapons organization (OPCW).

In September 2013, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to join OPCW's Chemical Weapons Convention, which required his government to abandon chemical weapons as well as destroy property facilities. export as well as chemical storage throughout the country.

However, according to Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert at SecureBio in the UK, forcing Syria to end its chemical weapons program is only half the battle. During the civil war in this country, OPCW was tasked with drawing up a plan to safely remove chemical weapons from Syria.

An Italian tugboat is helping the MV Cape Ray dock at Medcenter, Italia container handling port on July 1, 2014.(Photo: Live Science)

Mr. de Bretton-Gordon revealed, not everyone accepts OPCW support. For example, Germany and Albania refused to allow most of Syria's deadly chemical weapons to cross their borders.

The United States eventually promoted the plan. Instead of transporting deadly dangerous weapons to a certain country, the US has equipped a naval ship with the necessary equipment to destroy chemicals at sea.

Hydrolysis process offshore

MV MV Cape Ray, currently anchored in an "unspecified" position in the international waters of the Atlantic Ocean, is the first US-built ship, equipped with two disabled FDHS hydrolysis systems . toxic chemicals.

According to de Bretton-Gordon, who has been a British military specialist for chemicals, biology, radioactivity and nuclear for 23 years, such hydrolysis systems are not new technologies. Because, they have been used to remove dangerous chemical inventories from countries like Britain and the United States for decades.

However, putting hydrolysis systems on a ship is a unique way to deal with chemical weapons. The US Department of Defense said the two FDHS systems were housed in a sealed tent on Cape Ray. Each system is equipped with a titanium-based reactor that can safely handle corrosive materials. FDHS systems are also equipped with integrated backup systems to protect them from unforeseen incidents.

FDHS systems will mix 380 liters of toxic chemicals with thousands of liters of seawater and another neutralizing chemical (reactant). In some cases, a mixture of reactants, based on compounds such as potassium or sodium hydroxide, is used to neutralize toxic chemicals, according to Dennis Reutter, a retired US military scientist. For example, for water-insoluble mustard, monomethylamine solvents are used in hydrolysis.

End handling safety in the end

The mixture of acid chemicals and base reactants will then be strongly mixed, causing deadly chemicals to become less toxic. Safer chemicals are obtained, called waste water, which can then be destroyed in many ways, through cremation or other waste treatment processes.

Specifically, during the cremation process, non-fatal chemicals and their containers will be burned inside a commercial incinerator. Weapons that once contained chemicals, such as hollow missile shells, could also be destroyed in this way. Smoke produced by the cremation process will often have to go through a series of filtering and concentrating devices to neutralize its toxicity.

In the United States and other countries, authorities often use cremation to destroy waste chemicals, so de Bretton-Gordon said that the wastewater produced by Cape Ray will also be removed in this way. .

In total, the Cape Ray vessel will handle nearly 772 tons of Syrian government's hazardous and dangerous chemicals. Nearly 1.5 million liters of wastewater will then be stored on board until they are transported to a certain country for permanent destruction. According to the announcement of the OPCW, Germany will receive all wastewater collected from the process of neutralizing Syrian mustard gas. Finland also received nearly 4,500 liters of wastewater from Cape Ray.