DASA Competition: Innovation in Dermal Protection Against Liquid Chemicals

Funding for proposals that will address the problem of providing dermal protection against liquid chemical contamination.

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) is part of the UK Government’s Ministry of Defence. The Accelerator helps public and private innovators develop their ideas into exploitable products and services for defence and security customers, and experiments with novel methodology and innovative approaches to facilitate accelerating delivery of the best solutions.

DASA has launched this competition in partnership with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Home Office to support projects with the potential to provide dermal protection against liquid chemical contamination. The funders are interested in treatments, fabric design, novel constructions or any other approach that prevents the penetration of low surface tension liquids without the use of chemistries which are currently the subject of restriction proposals (eg under REACH, ECHA).

The overall objective is to allow the manufacture of protective suits that meet the essential criteria against liquid and vapour given in NATO Standard AEP-72 Volume I – Recommended chemical, biological and TIC challenge levels. Additionally, products should meet the robustness testing detailed in ‘BS 8467:2006 – Protective clothing. Personal protective ensembles for use against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents. Categorisation, performance requirements and test methods’.

There are two separate Challenges in this competition.

1. Proposals submitted under Challenge 1 should detail a programme of work ending at TRL 3 to demonstrate basic liquid protection properties, with potential to be progressed further towards the specific chemical warfare protection requirements, specified in Challenge 2. All proposals funded under this challenge will be invited to submit an additional proposal meeting the requirements of Challenge 2
2. Proposals submitted under Challenge 2 should detail a programme of work to demonstrate a more comprehensive chemical agent challenge. Challenge 2 projects should start at TRL3 and end at least TRL 5.

Although being run on behalf of the UK government there is significant potential for solutions developed to be exploited internationally.