Flight decks for carrier-based aircraft require time consuming and manpower-intensive maintenance. Debris, fuel, oil, and hydraulic fluids — all of which are hazardous to personnel and aircraft — must be continually removed. The Mobile Cleaning Reclaim and Recovery System (MCRRS) is an a Office of Naval Research (ONR) funded, Small Business Innovation Research program that was designed specifi cally to address the need for a automated flight deck cleaning solution that is also environmentally safe.
The MCRRS is designed to replace the old-fashioned manual cleaning process that involved legions of sailors with scrub brushes and mops. This manual process wears the nonskid surfaces and reduces available time for flight ops and training for personnel. Salt-water used during a manual scrub-down corrodes metal parts and leaves behind hazardous detergent and oil-waste contaminants in the ocean.
MCRRS is a self-contained system that uses a recyclable freshwater (detergent-free) rinse with a closed-cycle vacuum recovery system that reduces surface wear and eliminates salt water corrosion. The MCRRS is expected to speed up carrier flight deck cleaning operations, reduce costs, and virtually eliminate environmental impact of previous deck cleaning methods.
Initial testing for the MCRRS was held on the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in January 2009, and subsequent testing took place aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) in San Diego in March 2009 with positive results.
ONR partnered with NAVSEA, and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock in the development of MCRRS. Triverus LLC was the prime contractor, an engineering fi rm in Anchorage Alaska.