TDA Research, Inc., under con­tract to the U.S. Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency, is solic­it­ing can­di­date cat­a­lysts that may be able to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents under ambi­ent con­di­tions. DTRA seeks to devel­op cat­alyt­ic decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion capa­bil­i­ty that would pro­tect against chem­i­cal war­fare agents with­out need­ing to store and trans­port large vol­umes of decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ing liq­uids. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be sent direct­ly by the var­i­ous con­tribut­ing researchers to an inde­pen­dent sure­ty lab­o­ra­to­ry for test­ing with chem­i­cal agents HD, GB, and VX. Cat­a­lysts are sought that are active against one or more of these chem­i­cal agents. Cat­a­lysts need not be chem­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied, oth­er than pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient data on safe han­dling and dis­pos­al. Cat­a­lyst sam­ples will not be sub­ject­ed to chem­i­cal analysis.

After test­ing, cat­a­lyst sam­ples will be dis­posed of and will not be returned. Can­di­date cat­a­lysts will be test­ed if there is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion that they would be shelf sta­ble for pro­longed stor­age (5–10 years) at unreg­u­lat­ed tem­per­a­tures (up to 120 ºF). Cat­a­lysts that are known to pro­duce free rad­i­cals will not be test­ed in this pro­gram, since free rad­i­cals are known to pro­duce com­plex and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous prod­uct mix­tures. Cat­a­lysts will be eli­gi­ble for test­ing whether or not they have been designed to detox­i­fy chem­i­cal war­fare agents and regard­less of the amount of pre­vi­ous test­ing. Indi­vid­ual researchers may sub­mit mul­ti­ple cat­a­lysts for test­ing, although bud­get lim­i­ta­tions may dic­tate how many can­di­date mate­ri­als will be test­ed. Researchers will be pro­vid­ed with a report doc­u­ment­ing the per­for­mance of their cat­a­lyst sam­ples against chem­i­cal war­fare agents, includ­ing details of the test­ing pro­to­cols and com­par­isons to oth­er mate­ri­als tested.

To par­tic­i­pate in this pro­gram or for more infor­ma­tion, please contact
 
Bryan Smith, Ph.D.
Senior Chem­i­cal Engineer
TDA Research, Inc.
12345 W. 52nd Ave., Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
303–940-2331
FAX 303–422-7763