Improved Chemical Protective Gloves Using Elastomeric Nanocomposites
Abstract
Nanocomposite Coatings of neoprene and nitrile Rubber based on InMat's environmentally friendly, water based, Nanolok coating technology have been developed. In this report, we discuss the optimization and scale up of these coating formulations that are targeted for use in multilayer chemical protective gloves. Such gloves will provide the protection of butyl based gloves while having significantly improved resistance to petroleum oils and gasoline while also being less flammable. There is also the potential for making these gloves significantly thinner than the currently used butyl rubber gloves. This report also discusses the details of permeation through multilayer structures, and shows how to model both the steady state permeation rate and the kinetics. It is the short time kinetics after initial exposure to a chemical warfare agent (CWA) that is critical to determining the protection. The modeling work described here is used to demonstrate that the use of nanocomposite barrier layers in a multilayer structure provide some surprisingly important dependence on the details of how the barrier is deployed in the structure. This work has led to a patent application, and has been verified using detailed studies of the kinetics of helium permeation. Initial work on solvents and CWA simulants is also presented to further demonstrate the potential of this multilayer approach.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 06, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA443599
Entities
People
- Carrie A. Feeney
- Harris A. Goldberg