DARPA Selects SRI International, SwRI for Toxic Chemical Conversion Contracts; Tyler McQuade Comments

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded SRI International and Southwest Research Institute contracts to develop and design system prototypes to convert toxic chemicals into soil and other non-hazardous compounds.

DARPA said Wednesday it made the awards under the agency’s Agnostic Compact Demilitarization of Chemical Agents initiative.

ACDC aims to develop new transportable platforms that will work to neutralize stockpiles of chemical warfare agents into safe forms without the need to transport dangerous chemicals to remote disposal sites for post-processing.

“The desired outcome from the neutralization process is environmentally safe material – fertilized soil,” said Tyler McQuade, program manager at DARPA.

“Most toxins are produced from safe natural materials in the first place, so we want to put them back into their original harmless state.”

SRI will work with Parsons and MarqMetrix to build a plasma technology-based system that can burn and convert organic molecules into safe components.

SwRI will develop a deployable engine platform that will use organic molecules as a fuel to destroy toxic compounds, generate energy and eventually convert the produced energy into electricity, DARPA said.