“There’s a massive amount of energy given off very quickly,” says Stephen Beaudoin, a chemical engineer also at Purdue University. The Great Explosion: On April 2, 1916, at 14:20, a factory in Uplees, Faversham, exploded … When combined with fuel oils, ammonium nitrate creates a potent explosive widely used by the construction industry, but also by insurgent groups like the Taliban for improvised explosives. An explosion occurred in a warehouse storing some 300 metric tons of ammonium nitrate in the southern French city of Toulouse. “Plastics, for example, paint, and other organic materials that completely or partially burned—all the building materials that became dust.”, The deadly history of ammonium nitrate, the explosive linked to the Beirut blast, Photograph by Anwar AMRO, AFP via Getty Images. In 2015, disaster struck in Tianjin, China, when a fertilizer explosion killed 165 people at a busy seaport. But Lebanon's Interior Minister said the blast was a store of about 2,750 tonnes of seized ammonium nitrate blowing up. By comparing the blast’s size against nearby buildings, video of the Beirut incident shows that in the eighth of a second after the explosion occurred, its spherical shockwave grew to roughly 800 feet wide. Two tons of the fertilizer were mixed with diesel fuel to create a bomb placed inside a rental truck that detonated in front of the building. Measured using this method, onlookers estimated the blast was roughly equivalent to 400 to 3,000 tons of TNT, an explosive material that’s also used as a unit to measure the destructiveness of explosions. Piling up large amounts of ammonium nitrate allows more heat to be contained for longer when a mixture burns. 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Ammonium nitrate was also involved in that explosion. It’s known to predispose people to the worst effects of respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. Although we do not know exactly what happened yet in Beirut, the sheer size of the collected ammonium nitrate offers some clues. Though ammonium nitrate was first synthesized in 1659 by German chemist Johann Rudolf Glauber, it wasn’t used in explosives until World War I, when weapon makers mixed it with TNT (aka dynamite) to make cheaper bombs. Explosions of ammonium nitrate, involving relatively small quantities, have occurred during the preparation of nitrous oxide. In 2013, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, caught fire and exploded, killing 15 people. It is the main component of explosive used in mining activities all over the world and hasn’t been banned as reported. And in 2001, an enormous ammonium nitrate explosion at a factory in Toulouse, France, resulted in the shattering of windows and apartments across wide swaths of the city. EPA Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response; Explosion Hazard from Ammonium Nitrate. The site, which belonged to … Videos posted online from the Beirut waterfront on Aug. 4 showed an epic disaster unfold with terrifying speed. The Biggest Ammonium Nitrate Explosions since 2000. When combined with fuel oils, ammonium nitrate creates a potent explosive widely used by the construction industry, but also by insurgent groups like the Taliban for improvised explosives. Lebanon explosion: What is ammonium nitrate, which authorities claim to be behind the blast AFP Washington, August 05, 2020 08:54 IST Updated: August 05, … By contrast, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 had a yield of at least 13,000 tons of TNT. Lebanese port officials said they made several requests to the courts to have the stockpile removed, but got no response. Blast calculations suggest that at sea level, an explosion like Beirut’s would require about 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate. Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) is a red, bad-smelling gas. 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