Jon Nazca


Between 2AM and 5AM on the morning of August 21, 2013, the temperature in Ghouta, Syria, was falling, meaning that air was sinking towards the ground, rather than rising. When surface-to-surface rockets landed in the eastern Damascus suburb and released a colourless, odourless liquid that turned into vapour, the gas did not float away: instead it drifted into the basements and lower levels of buildings where people were sheltering from the barrage.

Those in hiding quickly found their eyes becoming irritated and their noses began to run. It became difficult to breathe. Further symptoms followed: disorientation, nausea and vomiting. When help arrived -- including doctors and nurses who lived nearby -- they found large numbers of people on the ground, unconscious or dead. Those who came to assist soon succumbed themselves: one of them later said he felt a "sensation of impending doom" before fainting.

Within hours, videos of the events in Ghouta were uploaded to YouTube. They showed rows of dead bodies, including children. There is no definitive death toll, but foreign intelligence agencies, international media and human rights groups estimate that at least a few hundred people died -- Médecins Sans Frontières says it treated at least 3,600 patients, of whom 355 died. UN weapons inspectors, already in Syria to investigate an alleged chemical attack elsewhere, shifted focus to Ghouta. A daily five-hour ceasefire was agreed between August 26 and 29. The inspectors visited the suburb, where they were shot at -- with both sides blaming the other -- to collect medical samples, take statements and photograph the remains of rockets.

They soon confirmed that the nerve agent sarin -- which quickly kills by attacking the human nervous system -- had been used. Both the Syrian government and the rebel forces denied responsibility. On September 14, representatives from the Russian Federation and US government met in Geneva and signed a document that undertook to eliminate chemical weapons from Syria. The Syrian government, under political pressure and military threat, agreed that it would sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an arms treaty that aims to eliminate their production, stockpiling and use. Finally, a plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons was endorsed by the UN. The organisation just needed a way to do it.

A rocket loaded with toxic agents lies on the ground after the August 2013 attack on Ghouta


Eight months earlier, on December 27, 2012, Adam Baker was sitting at his desk at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center when he was invited into a colleague's office for a briefing. ECBC, as it's called by those who work there, is a huge US Army laboratory and testing ground a few kilometres northeast of Baltimore. Baker, 31, had joined ECBC as a chemical engineer in 2005, after studying the subject at nearby University of Maryland.

"This is kind of a hub for all the chemical, and biological, related parts of the [US] Department of Defense," he says, "Most of them are centred here, so it's a good place for chemical engineers to end up."

Baker was told about a high-level meeting with the US Department of Defense (DoD) at which he and his team had been given the task of figuring out how to destroy and dispose of hundreds of tonnes of liquid chemical agents and precursors (agents are immediately usable as weapons; precursors are ingredients which can be used to make chemical weapons). If no suitable technology existed, the DoD wanted to know what technology could be manufactured quickly.

"At that point, the project was not very well defined," Baker says. "There was an expectation from many of us that this would be either the start of a long-term acquisition process or a short-term demonstration of the technologies available."

Baker's team, along with other US government departments, spent two weeks surveying the existing technology. Since joining ECBC he'd spent time disposing of US chemical weapons, mostly mustard gas in mortar rounds in the ground during remediation of former US military testing sites. The method for making them safe was to put the munitions in a sealed container, crack the shell with explosives, inject neutralising chemicals into the sealed container and mix it. It was effective for chemical agents in munitions, but it wasn't suitable for eliminating large quantities of liquid chemicals.

Another strategy ECBC had previously called upon was hydrolysis, which was also used to dispose of stockpiles of mustard gas. The process involves mixing the liquid chemical agent with water according to what Baker describes as "recipes" that have been refined over several years. Once the agent and water is mixed, neutralising chemicals are added (the type depends on which agent is being processed). This creates an effluent that is the equivalent of industrial chemical waste.

This approach was exactly what the DoD was searching for, but there was a snag: it also needed to be able to deploy the technology in the field. The DoD needed to set up close to the sites where chemical weapons are being stored and the hydrolysis system was not transportable because of its size.

"It was basically a chemical plant," Baker says, "I couldn't give you a reliable estimate of its size, but in the region of tens of acres, I guess."

At a follow-up meeting, Baker's team explained that nothing effective and transportable currently existed. Potential solutions were discussed. Then Baker and his team were told something surprising: whatever solution they came up with would have to be built within six months. Baker knew it would be "difficult, bordering on impossible" to design and develop a completely new technology in that short timeframe, so they "indicated that hydrolysis was the best candidate". They just needed to shrink it. Significantly.

Shrinking a chemical plant so it fits on a lorry is not easy. They started work on a prototype in February 2013 (the design team comprised 20 people from ECBC and two other departments, though scores of others were involved). They already knew the process flows and recipes (such as where the liquid would go, how it should be mixed and in what ratios) from their experience with the existing hydrolysis system. To reduce the plant's size, they used computer drafting and specialist fabrication. After five months they revealed their creation: the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System.

"We just call it the FDHS," says Baker. "No nicknames."

The FDHS is a chemical processing plant which fits into two six-metre-long containers that can be transported around the world. It takes ten days to set up and is operated by a crew of 15 per shift. Its main components are a 8,300-litre titanium reactor which can treat 25 tonnes of chemical agent (or precursor) per day; a 15,000-litre water tank; a water heater; ventilation systems; interim holding tanks; a command and control centre; a laboratory; and power generators. It simply mixes the chemicals with water, then pumps out an effluent which is treated in the interim holding tanks.

"Water is enough to destroy the compound," Baker says. "The byproducts of that are acidic -- you end up with hydrochloric acid or hydrofluoric acid, both of which are difficult to store, hazardous and very dangerous. From the back end it will drain into the interim holding tanks where it will then be mixed with sodium hydroxide, which will neutralise the acids.

"So the first step is to destroy the chemical agent. Then the second step is to render the waste a little less hazardous by adding sodium hydroxide. Once that comes out [of the interim storage tanks] you basically have a solution that's a pH between seven and 12, just some salt products of the reaction in an alkaline environment. The analogy that people keep using is that it's like household drain cleaners."

The effluent that comes out of the interim holding tanks is transferred to large mobile containers which can be towed by lorries -- the kind you see being used to transport liquid chemicals on British roads. They are taken to a commercial industrial waste facility, where such substances are routinely disposed of.

Baker and his team proudly unveiled their prototype in June 2013. Then Ghouta happened.


"I can't speak for everyone in the team," he says, "but prior to that I had the impression this was something we were building just in case. It seemed exceedingly unlikely that it would ever actually get used in Syria. It didn't look like that was something that was on the cards, and when that attack happened, and then the aftermath. Everything went so quickly that within a week it suddenly felt like, 'Yeah, this really looks like it's going to happen.' It was kind of surprising and startling."


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