RE added water intensifying AN explosions, in light of my non-evil
namesake's just-in correction, oh well, cancel various consequent
speculations.
Henry
On 8/5/2020 11:09 AM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Wed, 5 Aug 2020, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
Pure more-or-less-anhydrous AN's TNT equivalence is about 40%, so that would make about a 1kT blast. A few percent of added fuel, or substantial amounts of added water (!), with thorough mixing can about double that.
Added water? How's that work?
_Apologies, that looks to have been my misunderstanding of a vague description -- the explosive in question has other ingredients I wasn't aware of. _
There would have been some added water here regardless, with the AN stored for years in sacks in a warehouse right by the water. But, I wonder - in those other cases you mention, might local firefighters have hosed down not-yet-ignited sacks of AN, attempting to reduce ignition risks without realizing they were increasing potential detonation severity?
That could actually be worth some investigation with an eye toward possibly modifying procedures for fighting AN fires.
Henry
On 8/5/2020 9:42 AM, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
On 05/08/2020 00:18, Henry Spencer wrote:
Pure more-or-less-anhydrous AN's TNT equivalence is about 40%, so that would make about a 1kT blast. A few percent of added fuel, or substantial amounts of added water (!), with thorough mixing can about double that.Added water? How's that work?
There seem to have been firefighters in attendance at the fires preceding all the three large accidental AN explosions I know of, Texas City; West, Texas; and now Beruit.
Did their hoses contribute anything?
Peter Fairbrother
