ALBAGAIA, an Aberdeen based start-up company, is to unveil a portable system for neutralising the deadly ingredients in chemical and biological weapons at a conference in Edinburgh today.

The device, which comes in units small enough to be carried aboard aircraft, will be put on display at the Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference, the main annual event for the industry, which makes devices to clean up contamination created by weapons of mass destruction.

Albagaia estimates that the market for destroying chemical weapons could be worth hundreds of billions of pounds.

Stocks of chemical and biological weapons held in many countries must be destroyed under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty signed by most countries. In addition, unexploded weapons litter the world's former battlefields.

Bioterrorism also presents a growing global threat.

Albagaia was formed in 2000 by former members of staff at the Dounreay nuclear power station in northern Scotland.

The company has received seed funds during the past two years from the development agency Scottish Enterprise.

Albagaia's founders have developed a system for neutralising chemical and biological weapons that uses water, a catalyst and a light source.

Other systems destroy chemical weapons by using high temperatures or pressures or by incinerating them in specially constructed plants. This often produces unacceptable waste.

"Our technology operates at both ambient temperature and pressure and is portable, taking the solution to the problem and thus eliminating transport risks, " said an Albagaia spokesman.

The company said its systems were designed and built to customer requirements. The systems can cope with problems ranging from a small terrorist device in an aircraft or apartment building to a large stockpile of weapons agents Albagaia said it tested its technology at the ministry of defence's Porton Down chemical defence centre in 2003 using live chemical agents.