A team of experts lifted one of the larger deliveries to the Blue Grass site from a trailer and placed it in a laydown area Dec. 11.

“It’s a critical lift… and the first one we’ve done here in quite a while,” said Bruce Skelly, field engineer – superintendent, Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass. “Because of this, we performed a ‘test pick’ first. The construction coordinator said the actual lift was ‘picture perfect.’”

The subject of the heavy lift, the Static Detonation Chamber (SDC) 2000 thermal oxidizer, was fabricated overseas and shipped to the U.S. Weighing 67 tons, it was transported to the site on a trailer designed for the load. When installed, it will cleanse the gases from the destruction process to ensure the protection of the workforce, community and environment, like the ones in operation at the main plant and the Explosive Destruction Technology facility.

“Munitions placed into the chamber will undergo a thermal destruction process called deflagration or detonation,” said Fred Barnes, Explosive Destruction Technology engineering lead, Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant. “Gases from that process will flow through the thermal oxidizer, and any organics that might not have been destroyed in the detonation chamber are destroyed in there.”

Assembly of the SDC 2000 off-gas treatment system is scheduled to begin in the second half of January. The detonation chamber is scheduled to arrive later in 2021.