PREVAIL (241858)

  https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/241858

  FP7 (2007-2013)

  PRecursors of ExplosiVes: Additives to Inhibit their use including Liquids

  Properties of improvised explosive devices, additives to precursors to explosives to prevent precursors from being used to manufacture explosive devices (SEC-2009-1.3-03)

  terrorism

  2010-09-01 Start Date (YY-MM-DD)

  2013-10-31 End Date (YY-MM-DD)

  € 4,296,266 Total Cost

  Description

Homemade explosives (HMEs) are easy to make from readily available materials used for legitimate purposes in everyday life. This availability attracts terrorists to manufacture and use homemade explosives since military and commercial explosives are harder to come by. Two approaches to improve this situation exists. 1) Prohibit or limit the accessibility of these precursor chemicals 2) Use science to solve this problem by making it harder for potential terrorists to make HMEs or by facilitating the detection of these. PREVAIL will address these scientific challenges by a novel approach. The PREVAIL concept and objectives are to prevent the use of hydrogen peroxide (HP) and acetone as precursors to homemade explosives by the development of a series of novel inhibitors, and to ensure that the detection of ammonium nitrate (AN) based devices is facilitated by adding markers tailored to a very sensitive detection system. These objectives must be met without obstructing the legitimate use or causing any adverse effects on the environment or people’s health. The PREVAIL project main activities are development and testing of markers for the inhibition of TATP production and for the concentration of HP by boiling off water (as was done for the London bombings) as well as development of novel markers for easy detection of illicit use of fertilizers. The final outcome of the PREVAIL project are inhibitors for illicit production of TATP and HP based explosives as well as novel marker/detector systems for easy detection of AN based bombs. The PREVAIL project will work together with the chemical manufacturing industry in order to achieve early industrial acceptance of the research. The PREVAIL consortium consists of four research institutes (FOI, TNO,CEA, WIHiE), two chemical industries representing the End Users (Yara, Arkema), three SMEs (Inscentinel, KCEM, SECRAB) and one university (Technion).

  Complicit Organisations

1 Israeli organisation participates in PREVAIL.