In caso di successo...

Italian

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In caso di successo, l'operazione segnerebbe la prima volta che la neutralizzazione di agenti di guerra chimica è stata condotta in mare, secondo i funzionari degli Stati Uniti.



English

US ship assigned to destroy Syria's chemical weapons set to depart within two weeks

Key Points

• Cape Ray is equipped with two FDHS
• The ship is expected to neutralise 700 metric tonnes of bulk liquid chemical agents during its 90-day mission

The US cargo ship equipped with a system to destroy a portion of Syria's chemical weapon stockpile is making preparations to depart on its assignment by mid-January, Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Transportation (DoT) officials said on 2 January.
"The departure will depend upon a number of factors, but we expect within about two weeks the ship to depart," Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top acquisition official, told reporters during a briefing in Portsmouth, Virginia, where the US Ready Reserve Force vessel MV Cape Ray (T-AKR 9679) is being readied to support a UN mission to destroy Syria's chemical weapons.
Equipped with two Field Deployable Hydrolysis Systems (FDHS), Cape Ray is expected to eliminate about 700 metric tonnes of chemical warfare materiel from Syria. The bulk liquid stores of mustard gas and Sarin components will be transported from the civil war-torn country on board Norwegian and Danish ships to an exchange site in the Mediterranean Sea, possibly in Italy, where Cape Ray is expected to take on the shipment of chemicals for neutralisation.

An environmental enclosure installed on board the Cape Ray houses the FDHS that is designed to destroy bulk liquid chemical warfare agents, including mustard gas and precursors to Sarin.

 

Kendall said that the transfer details are still being determined but that the exchange would be "a fairly short two-day operation".
Officials are expecting the chemicals to be transferred to Cape Ray in approximately 280 standard ISO tank containers, each with a capacity of 6,600 gallons (24,983 litres). Once on board, the US team expects to neutralise the chemicals within 90 days, officials said.

"The actual time we'll have to operate the systems is about 45 days, but we're allowing 90 days of time because we may not be able to operate all the time," said Kendall.

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If successful, the operation would mark the first time that the neutralisation of chemical warfare agents has been conducted at sea, according to US officials.

Standing in front of Cape Ray , a 197 m long roll-on/roll-off vessel under the purview of the DoT's Maritime Administration, Kendall said that the portable hydrolysis system has undergone shipboard testing and would proceed through additional sea trials in the coming days.

The 1,000-litre bulk storage tank, part of the FDHS installed on board Cape Ray, will assist in neutralising Syria's chemical weapons.

 

Acquired for about USD5 million per system, the FDHS employs technology and neutralisation processes that have been used to destroy US chemical weapons. By heating the chemical warfare agents and mixing them with reagents including water, sodium hydroxide, and sodium hypochlorite, the compounds are chemically neutralised and are rendered into hazardous waste that can be disposed commercially.
Officials said that they expect the FDHS to convert the 700 metric tonnes of mustard gas and DF compound - a precursor to the nerve gas Sarin - into 1.5 million gallons of liquid effluent. The waste liquid will be further treated so that it has a caustic property similar to that of household cleaners. That hazardous waste will then be disposed of by commercial means, which are yet to be determined by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is overseeing the destruction of Syria's stockpile.
A team of approximately 63 civilian personnel from the US Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, will oversee the operation on board Cape Ray . According to Rob Malone, an environmental engineer representing the Joint Project Manager for Elimination, part of DoD's Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, the intent is to operate the two FDHS concurrently around the clock, with a pause every seventh day for maintenance and repairs on the systems.
"This is something we know how to do, and that team which will be operating the machines essentially knows exactly how to do that, and we're confident we'll do a very capable job," said Kendall, whose office helped to fund the rapid acquisition of the systems.

In February 2013 the ECBC was funded to design, assemble, and test the FDHS. Adam Baker, a chemical engineer from the ECBC, said the team decided to employ technologies that have been used to neutralise chemicals at various sites in the United States. At Aberdeen's demilitarisation facility, for example, US teams have neutralised 1,800-tonne containers of mustard gas. At a facility at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, a different process has been used to neutralise the DF compound.
"Based on the short timeline, we had to use this established chemistry and copy those systems as much as possible and just scale them down into a transportable form," said Baker.
The first FDHS was demonstrated on 27 June 2013 and was handed over in July 2013. Installation of the two systems on board Cape Ray commenced in late November 2013, followed by the ship's first operational test in late December 2013, Malone told reporters during a tour of the FDHS.
With the FDHS running inside an environmental enclosure on Cape Ray 's cavernous main trailer deck, the chemical warfare agents will be processed in batches. The batch size for mustard gas is about 130 gallons, which takes two hours to process, said Malone.
What concerns officials the most is not the neutralisation technology, but rather the weather that the ship may encounter during its mission. Cape Ray 's captain, Rick Jordan, expressed confidence in the ship's handling capabilities.
"This ship has Gyrofin stabilisers which we can rig out, so when - if it's rolling quite a bit, that'll dampen the roll," Jordan said.
With a crew of 35 merchant mariners - six more than normal, to assist with services for the passengers - Cape Ray will host a total of 138 personnel, to include a military security team and additional support from US European Command.
Built by Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1977, Cape Ray is one of 46 US Ready Reserve Force vessels that transport equipment and supplies for the DoD - it helped to transport military ground equipment to Afghanistan, for example. Ready Reserve Force ships also are employed by the Maritime Administration to help train law enforcement and local officials in the shipboard environment. They also have been deployed for humanitarian assistance and natural disaster relief efforts, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as Superstorm Sandy.


 Link:

http://www.janes.com/article/32051/us-ship-assigned-to-destroy-syria-s-chemical-weapons-set-to-depart-within-two-weeks