Ever since storage facilities kept about 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in Beirut, Lebanon, import and storage of the country's chemical has come under the scanner.
But why
is ammonium nitrate so dangerous to keep?
Ammonium nitrate is a crystal-like white solid which is
made in substantial industrial quantities. It has been massively used as a nitrogen fertilizer source; it is also used to create explosives for mining.
Ammonium nitrate is synthetic, and it is made by reacting ammonia
with nitric acid, it can’t be found in the ground.
Keeping in storage can be a problem, and it has been
associated with severe industrial accidents in the past.
Ammonia nitrate is relatively safe to handle; however, if
you have a large amount of material lying around for a long time, it begins to
decay.
It can be dangerous over time. It absorbs a little bit of
moisture, and it eventually turns into an enormous rock. This makes it more
dangerous because if the fire reaches it, the chemical reaction will be more intense.
If you have noticed, the explosion happened in Beirut earlier
in August showed smoke billowing from a fire and then a mushroom cloud
following the blast.
There is a supersonic shockwave that is traveling through
the air, and you can see that in the white spherical cloud which travels out
from the center, expanding upwards.
Basically, the shockwave is produced from compressed air,
the air expands rapidly and cools suddenly, and the water condenses, which cause the
cloud.
What
and how menacing are the gases produced?
When ammonium nitrate explodes, it can release toxic
gases, including nitrogen oxides and ammonia gas.
The orange plume is caused by nitrogen dioxide, which
is often associated with air pollution.
If there isn’t much wind, it could lead to danger to the
people nearby.
Ammonium nitrate has been used by armies around the world
as an explosive.
It has also been used in many terrorist acts, including
the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Two tonnes of ammonium nitrate created a
bomb that destroyed a federal building and killed around 168 people.
In 1921, about 45 00 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caused
an explosion at a plant in Oppau, Germany, killing more than 500 people.
In 1947, the deadliest industrial accident in US history
occurred in Texas, which killed 581 people when more than 2,000 tonnes of the
chemical detonate on-boarded a ship that had docked in the port.
In 2015, an explosion involving ammonium nitrate and
other chemicals killed 173 people in Tianjin, northern China.
Ammonium
nitrate (NH4NO3), a salt of ammonia and nitric acid. The
commercial-grade contains about 33.5% nitrogen, all of which is in forms
utilizable by plants; it is the most common nitrogenous artificial fertilizer component. Ammonium nitrate is also employed to modify other explosives' detonation rates, such as nitro-glycerine in the so-called ammonia dynamites, or as an oxidizing agent ammonals are mixtures of ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum.
It is a colorless
crystalline substance (melting point 169.6 °C [337.3 °F]). It is highly
soluble in water; the water solution's heating decomposes the salt to nitrous
oxide (laughing gas). Because solid ammonium nitrate can undergo explosive decomposition
when heated in a confined space, government regulations have been imposed on
its shipment and storage.
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