Current Collective Protection Equipment (CPE) designs for the removal of toxic industrial chemicals and military chemical agents utilize thick and inefficient packed beds. To achieve high levels of filtration, existing systems introduce large pressure drops into air management systems and make inefficient use of the sorbents they contain. A composite bed presents a more efficient and lower pressure drop alternative to these systems. A composite bed composed of large sorbent particles (0.6 – 1.7 mm) followed by a polishing filter several millimeters thick can achieve high breakthrough times with low total thickness and pressure drop. The polishing filter component of the composite bed is composed of small, well-dispersed sorbent particles (106 – 250 micron) sinter-locked in a layer several millimeters thick of micron diameter nickel fibers. The outlet gas from the large sorbent particles immediately encounters the high contacting efficiency polisher and thus overall breakthrough time is greatly reduced. Test data using a hexane challenge (as a chemical simulant of DMMP) has shown this arrangement is capable of 5-log protection for 85 minutes (1000 mg/m3 hexane, 24.2 cm/s face velocity) at only 1.3” H2O pressure drop and 1.3 cm total bed thickness. High sorbent utilization is achieved in both components, reducing overall pressure drop and dramatically increasing breakthrough time as compared to current COTS designs. Based on a 0.1 ppm breakthrough concentration, a composite bed arrangement achieved 67.0% utilization vs. 39.5% utilization for a packed bed alone. CPE composite bed designs are regenerable in-situ through thermal swing adsorption by hot air purge. Previous research has shown the system to be highly regenerable. Since the composite bed is thin, regeneration times are low resulting in increased filter productivity.