Posted on 08/05/2020 4:19:11 PM PDT by BenLurkin
If it was fireworks wouldn’t we have seen some flying through the air. I’m thinking something bigger. Pretty loud pops your can hear and see.
In combat engineering and mining, AN mixtures are used as festering charges to damage/ destroy roads rails bridge abutment etc and other tasks requiring a lower speed heaving effect.
Quarrying relies in modernized versions.
It is very safe until an initiation system is added.
As a cbt engr, I jumped with charges or caps never both.
Always a very moving right when a pattern of 40 lb charges are detonated on a roadway to deny enemy use, first, shaped charges blow holes, then one, two or three 40 lb charges are placed in rows to heave the material towards the enemy’s approach, and fired. Watching some 100 cu yds of pavement, base and earth move like a cup of flour being heaped is cool. Biggest I planned and shot was some 1200 lbs in one target.
SIL is a master blaster for a large quarry operation in SA TX. He routinely shoot 2 t of mix in 100 holes and busts 100t of rock. All with no above ground effects. They get in trouble when it goes aerial.
Heat a decent amount to 200c and keep heating it till it hits 570c, but be at a safe distance....it will explode.
Look at that. Real science that can’t be politically manipulated.
I don't have first hand experience in actually seeing them mix it like you do but from the satellite photos, it looks like that little ol machine shed was about 700 feet long and about 250 feet wide. I wish I had a machine shed that size.
Well, it was all of Hezbollah’s C-4 stored next door that really amplified the effect. :)
I wasnt talking about that one in Beirut.
I was talking about the one in Michigan where they did the weird science. BTW, they were NOT ALLOWED to store any of the stuff there at that plant. They had to bring it in from someplace to that place and do their thing, and then after it was mixed, it had to be taken to the blasting site ASAP and used. So they had to plan ahead-which must have been a real SOB to do sometimes. Some of the more nasty stuff they had to mix on site. So they never had many “tons” stored at that facility for long. Matter of fact, he said it was never more than a U-haul sized truck, or two, at a time and if it had to sit for a day, it was stored scattered and not in one pile.
My buddies said it made a person get the willys.
So the trick is even heating so it self combusts?
So lighting on fire doesn’t work but this does?
Not sure, but it’s dangerous at high temperature. Very stable at ambient temps.
I think in cases where AN explodes in bulk due to fire, some of the mass is decomposed and becomes dangerous, and when it reaches critical temp, it detonated and the whole lot of it goes.
Interesting that the mines are storing it in big silos that have to get really hot, they claimed unless it was mixed it is completely inert
lots of interesting videos follow that one.
Don’t know how hot silos get. 280c is pretty darn warm though. 577c is its critical temp. That’s really hot, almost melt lead hot.
Well, doesn’t make sense still then. I don’t see it getting that hot unless it was on purpose
My bad. I thought that we were both talking about Beirut.
No problem.
I got to go read what they are saying today. They now are claiming it was a bomb that set it off...a foreign bomb.
Ya it was a bomb alright, it just wasnt foreign. That place was the site of the terrorist cells bomb making facilities. Couldnt been a better place hey?
AN is stable up to a point, like most chemical.
Check this article out.
https://m.dw.com/en/ammonium-nitrate/a-54452221
Basically, as I have stated, heat isn’t it’s friend. Too much AN too much heat= boom.
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