FEATURE Robotics
Robots help the US Army destroy chemical weapons
T
he last and most deadly of their kind, the US Army’s M55 rockets, fi lled with VX and sarin nerve agents, number approximately 70,000 at Central Kentucky’s Blue Grass army depot, almost double the population of the small college town where they’ve been ageing for decades. Designed in the late 1950s and rushed
into production, the chemical-fi lled rockets have warped over the decades and begun leaking their deadly chemical agents. Staring down an aggressive 2023 destruction deadline, in mid-2019, the US government’s Program Executive Offi ce – Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (PEO ACWA), which supervises the destruction, took an entirely diff erent approach to the process. Seeking automation expertise to make the process more effi cient, it turned to use of robots and automation technologies. It approached a Louisville engineering fi rm CRG Automation, best known for building packaging lines for the likes of Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s and Kraft.
“The perplexing engineering problems to solve, the rapidly-approaching deadline and the severity of the chemical agents involved all added up to a challenge we wanted to tackle,” said James DeSmet, CRG Automation President.
Safe destruction process First up was designing a rocket warhead containerisation system. Since there were a number of moving components, sensors and waste streams, maintenance and safety concerns were crucial, requiring most- stringent personal protective equipment. Just putting on the suit, which includes respirators and air hoses, can take four hours. The reactors used in the destruction
process measure three stories high. “You have a two-hour maximum time in the suit. By the time you get to your workstation, you’ve expended 30 minutes. So, how much can you really get done in an hour?” asked Jeff rey Brubaker, technical adviser for PEO ACWA. The full team – PEO ACWA, Amentum,
CRG Automation, Bechtel Parsons BlueGrass and additional partners
28 February 2022 | Automation
DynaSafe and Crown Packaging – began devising a new system to dispose of the rockets, which measure six feet long and 4.4 inches in diameter. With a newly- designed rocket warhead containerisation system, once a chemical-fi lled warhead has had its chemical agent separated from its rocket motor assembly, the all-robotic system places the warhead into a steel container with a lid that’s sealed in place using a crimp station. The automated robots, which were designed, fabricated and integrated by CRG Automation, then place the containers onto packaging skids that hold 25 containers each. These skids are then monitored in an airlock to ensure no surface contamination and moved to the next step in the process – a static detonation chamber in which intense heat greater than 1,000 degrees destroys the warhead and overpacked container. The drained chemical agent is neutralised in a separate process.
Robots for the task CRG Automation’s engineers used eight industrial robots and six autonomous mobile robots. The system allows for the processing of more than 25 warheads per hour, improving speed and effi ciency and reducing downtime. Additionally, CRG Automation
programmed the new robots to switch from horizontal to vertical cuts, as vertical cuts ensure that any leaking chemical agent simply gathers in the bottom of the fi ring tube. The team also developed a system to identify leaking rockets long before the robots made their fi rst cut, avoiding time-intensive downtime. The team incorporated X-ray technologies, devising a process to scan each rocket as it moved down the line. The system also allows technicians to gain a closer look at those rockets that suggest they may have leaks but do not off er complete certainty. “It’s been a long time coming to
destroy this stockpile,” said Brubaker. “These facilities are complex – years of construction and years of testing out the process before we go into operations. And at the end of that, to realise that we need a more robust process – to accomplish that in just over a year’s time is just fantastic.”
Above and below: CRG Automation’s robots were used in dismantling chemical weapons, such as sarin-filled rockets
CONTACT:
CRG Automation
www.crgautomation.com
automationmagazine.co.uk
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