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E x t r e m e W a s t e w a t e r T r e a t m e n t : Extreme Wastewater Treatment: D e c o n s t r u c t i n g C h e m i c a l W e a p o n s Deconstructing Chemical Weapons Can a filter save the world? Maybe not, but this application highlights the role of innovative water treatment technologies in protecting the health and welfare of the planet. By Dean Amhaus and Thomas Ausloos T he Milwaukee region's water industry is a $10.5 billion market and accounts for 4 percent of the world's total water technology business. The Water Council, with a growing membership of more than 160 organizations, is situated here, and its members are working to address a broad range of water-related issues to tackle the goal of improving world water health — including the safe destruction of chemical weapons. Oberlin Filter Company, a Water Council member since 2010, is a manufacturer of automatic pressure filters for solid- liquid separation located in Waukesha, WI. The company was selected to provide filtration equipment for the unique and challenging task of deconstructing U.S. chemical weapons reserves pursuant to the START I and New START treaties. START I And New START: Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Negotiations for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) ignited when President Ronald Reagan first proposed the agreement to Mikhail Gorbachev during the Geneva Summit in 1985. The final treaty was not signed and ratified until 1994 during President George W. Bush's term, mainly due to the complications and turmoil around the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The treaty outlined that Russia and the U.S. would be limited to 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 nuclear delivery vehicles each. This meant both governments must destroy their stockpile of chemical nerve agent weapons, thus leading to a drastic reduction in their combined stockpiles of nuclear warheads. In 2010, President Barack Obama's Administration signed and ratified the New START treaty, which further reduced the imposed limits. As outlined in the new treaty, both parties must meet the central limits on strategic arms by Feb. 8, 2018, exactly seven years from the date the treaty was officially executed. The new limits set deployed warheads at 1,550, significantly less than the original START I treaty, and further reduced nuclear delivery vehicles. Dismantling Chemical Nerve Agents, One Step At A Time The burning question now is, "How does a nation with such vast chemical weapon reserves safely and securely destroy and dispose of such dangerous arms?" The various secure locations of weapon stockpiles around the country must adopt and undergo a destruction plan of action that may employ a unique technology process, or one similar to plans conducted at other sites. General Atomics, a specialized contractor for the government, located in San Diego, was tasked with deconstructing reserves located at the Blue Grass Army Depot, outside of Richmond, KY. They were in search of a prefilter that would provide a nearly suspended-solids-free water solution before feeding into their posttreatment process. After General Atomics developed a proprietary process named SCWO (super critical water oxidation), designed to perform the final destruction of the organic components, they selected Oberlin as the solution to their prefilter need to provide a less-than-one-micron, suspended-solids-free solution before feeding their SCWO treatment reactor for the final treatment step. One of the big challenges was the large swing in total suspended solids (TSS) concentrations. The filter needed to be: • mechanically reliable with high, online operating time • automatic, to minimize operator exposure • flexible, in case the feed conditions changed and media had to be modified. Oberlin came to General Atomics' attention through a recommendation from one of their consultants and through previous testing/report recommendations done for a similar technology. General Atomics and Oberlin began working together initially with a five-year development process agreement, which eventually led to the two entities forming a partnership to dispose of the weapon reserves at Blue Grass Army Depot, where Oberlin's automatic pressure filter is still currently installed. Underneath the levels of personnel and environmental safety protections, the process of destruction is relatively simple and takes only a few steps: Destruction: The nerve agent is drained from the missile and 34 wateronline.com ■ Water Innovations