Accession Number:

ADA618155

Title:

Lipophilic Super-Absorbent Swelling Gels as Cleaners for Use on Weapons Systems and Platforms

Descriptive Note:

Final rept.

Corporate Author:

ENGINEER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER CHAMPAIGN IL CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING RESEARCH LAB

Personal Author(s):

• Boddu, Veera M.
• Uchimiya, Sophie M.
• Ohta, Masahiko
• Sada, Kazuki
• Myers, Christopher
• Ziegler, Wayne
• Torres, Thomas

Report Date:

2014-02-01

Pagination or Media Count:

72.0

Abstract:

Increasingly stringent environmental regulations on volatile organic compounds VOCs and hazardous air pollutants HAPs demand the development of disruptive technologies for cleaning weapons systems and platforms. Currently employed techniques suffer from safety and efficiency shortcomings. This work proposed to use novel lipophilic super-absorbent swelling gels as a disruptive solid state cleaning technology to overcome limitations of currently employed cleaning techniques. Results were compared with a commercially available alkylstyrene copolymer imbiber beads. The cleaning ability of the gels was compared with the standard solvent cleaner tri-chloroethylene TCE following American Society for Testing and Materials ASTM G122-962008 test methods and MIL-PRF-680B procedure with MIL-PRF-10924 test grease. Polymer gel cleaners exhibited analogues extent and rate of cleaning as the TCE. The work concludes that the recyclable superabsorbent polymer cleaners developed in this research will allow drastic reduction in the use of VOC containing solvents and HAP release.

Descriptors:

• *GELS
• AIR POLLUTION
• CLEANING COMPOUNDS
• HAZARDS
• ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
• REGULATIONS
• SOLVENTS
• WEAPON SYSTEMS

Subject Categories:

• Physical Chemistry

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE