Battelle has introduced a next-generation biological detection system that it is offering for a Defense Department program and hopes to offer for other security and industry applications, the company said on Monday.
The company is pitching its Resource Effective BioIdentification System (REBS) for the Pentagon’s Joint Biological Tactical Detection System (JBTDS) and said the technology could also be a candidate for the Department of Homeland Security’s Generation 3 BioWatch system. A Request for Proposals for the lightweight, manportable, JBTDS was released in February.
The REBS system runs all the time and automatically collects aerosol samples from the surrounding environment and then optically analyzes the samples for bio-hazards and biological warfare agents. Battelle said the operating costs for the system are less than one dollar per day per unit with an average cost to analyze each sample at just four cents.
Battelle estimates that customers would save about $56 million per 1,000 REBS units deployed compared to existing systems.
Battelle has been developing and manufacturing biological detection systems for the past 25 years. The company’s technology is the core engine in the Pentagon’s Joint Biological Point Detection System, which is contracted to Britain’s Chemring Group
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The company has sold a few of its REBS systems to industry users that need to monitor air quality in sanitary manufacturing operations.
REBS weighs about 35 pounds and is the size of a large microwave oven.