$1.5 Billion Mustard Gas Demilitarization Plant Planned For U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The United States Army Pueblo Chemical Depot (Pueblo, Colorado) has plans to construct a $1.5 billion demilitarization plant in Pueblo, Colorado (Plant 10244554) (PEC 4100107) as first reported by Industrialinfo.com in April 1997. The new plant will destroy 2,600 tons of mustard gas currently being stored at the Army Depot. Bechtel Pueblo Team (Pueblo, Colorado) has been selected to engineer and construct the new plant and hope to have final permits by the end of the year. Construction could begin as early as 2005 and will take approximately ten years to fully construct and decommission. The Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (ACWA) (Pueblo, Colorado), a Department of Defense organization created by congress in 1996 to safely destroy chemical weapons, will eventually own and operate the plant once fully commissioned.

One of the most popular forms of destroying such dangerous agents as mustard gas by the Army has been incineration. Realizing that the incineration process is 1,000% over budget and over fifteen years behind schedule other forms are being opted for. The new plant will use what is called the water based neutralization process. The incineration process applies heat and pressure, and the water based neutralization process uses bacteria to finish the process. For the water based neutralization process, the mustard gas is added to hot water and a sodium hydroxide solution and the chemical agent breaks down into hydrochloric acid and thiodiglycol. Then it is biologically treated, dewatered and the remaining brine is sent to a nearby landfill.