Sciencemadness Discussion Board - What Happened in Beirut

What Happened in Beirut

ShotBored - 5-8-2020 at 06:18

I'm quite familiar with disasters of this type and the type of damage they can cause. Look no further than an almost identical incident in Texas City, Texas, USA in the mid 20th century. But we didnt have video accounts of what happened then like we do now.

I was completely and utterly shocked to my core about the violence of that explosion. When I first saw the video, I immediately (though irrationally) thought that THAT is what a small tactical nuclear device would look like. I'm very aware of the capability to mass detonate of ammonium nitrate under conditions like that. What I'm more curious about is what we saw in the 0.5-1 second before the explosion.

You might notice in the videos of the detonation that a few dozen milliseconds before the mass detonation, a cloud of red gas is released. I was really interested in what was in that gas that seemed to be the transitioning point for the supersonic detonation. Was it red fuming nitric acid or some nitrous oxides from the decomposing AN? Curious what other thoughts people had on this.

My thoughts are with the people in Lebanon. 300k+ homeless and a death toll that I'm sure will be dipping into the high hundreds, maybe even low thousands. Absolutely heartbreaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ9G8ne8NLE

JJay - 5-8-2020 at 06:59

A small tactical nuclear device would have a blast radius about 2-3x larger. But the explosion is kind of in the ballpark. That gas was probably nitrogen oxides. It looked to me as though there was a fire, followed by a small explosion, followed by an enormous blast. It is accepted that ammonium nitrate, stored at the port for six years, was the cause of the blast. What is not yet clear is how the ammonium nitrate was detonated. I've read reports that confiscated weapons were also stored at that port, and there are also reports that people saw and heard fireworks before the blast.

Bmoore55 - 5-8-2020 at 07:33

Am I the only one that noticed the color of the explosion cloud? It looked red to me.

ShotBored - 5-8-2020 at 07:38

Quote: Originally posted by Bmoore55

Am I the only one that noticed the color of the explosion cloud? It looked red to me.

That is what we are curious about. I'd agree with @JJay that the clouds color was likely the release of nitrous oxides and nitric acid gas indicating the initial decomposition of the stored AN. From there there was no turning back from detonation, as the pressure dynamics would be moving towards supersonic reactions rates and subsequent detonation transition. It's just jaw-dropping to see how quickly that transition takes place.

I hope this grounds us and reminds us about ensuring proper storage of certain materials we work with, whether in the hobby or the professional realm.

Syn the Sizer - 5-8-2020 at 07:51

Quote: Originally posted by ShotBored

Quote: Originally posted by Bmoore55

Am I the only one that noticed the color of the explosion cloud? It looked red to me.

I agree, I have given my dad shit a few times for storing bleach and ammonia solution on the same shelf, I know risks are minimal and not explosive lile this, but it states on both jugs not to mix with the other. So storage should also be obvious. I keep all my chloride sources away from everything else.

Belowzero - 5-8-2020 at 11:14

A similar event:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster

This happened a couple of times in history.
It seems that the dynamics change when large amounts (several tons) are handled.

Having a strong heat source makes it a whole lot easier, apparently they also stored vast amounts of fireworks nearby which led to the initial burn.
Still it sounds like a one in a million shot, a terrible one though.
Doing this on purpose might be really hard.

[Edited on 5-8-2020 by Belowzero]

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 11:57

Slow motion two angles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OvgHZM95C0

I also turned Youtube to .25 speed.

AN menting point 337.3°F 169.6°C

Big boiling mass of the stuff?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

Saw alot of white hot mini explosions going on in the fire. Fireworks or electrical lines can't tell.

Maybe one of those white hot spots is what set it off.

How big a pile is 2750 Tons ?

Anyway this video is heartbreaking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it4_3DFL6gk

ShotBored - 5-8-2020 at 13:16

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Slow motion two angles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OvgHZM95C0

I also turned Youtube to .25 speed.

AN menting point 337.3°F 169.6°C

Big boiling mass of the stuff?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

Saw alot of white hot mini explosions going on in the fire. Fireworks or electrical lines can't tell.

Maybe one of those white hot spots is what set it off.

How big a pile is 2750 Tons ?

Anyway this video is heartbreaking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it4_3DFL6gk

@pyro_cat The video you posted only further shows how powerful that shit is. Look at the shockwave on the ocean! My biggest concern is the state of what looks like that hotel that's right next to the explosion...hopefully most people were evacuated. I also feel my heart stop when I think of the first responders that were fighting the fire....

But yes, I agree with you about the flashes, I thought it had started as a fireworks/pyrotechnics fire, so that would support what we see there.

For comparison sake as far as how big of a pile 2750 tons is, this new US Navy ship is 3000 tons: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/uss-little-rock-new...

So the pile would probably be larger than if all the metal on the ship were melted into a pile just based off density differences. An insane perspective to think about....the thought of storing that much AN for 6 years in a busy port like that makes me shudder.

Sigmatropic - 5-8-2020 at 14:11

There is no way in knowing what the density of that ship is, it's probably classified, but I'm guessing it's below 1 (g/ml or kg/l).

The density of ammonium nitrate is known to be 1.7 and the prills come in at 1.3 therefore this pile(~2.5 million kilos), assuming prills is supposed to be just over 1900 m3, quite a large pile indeed. The ensuing BFRC is reported unofficially to be also because of the firric rich ground on the site. most (sub tonne) AN blasts appear more brownish in nature, not a deep red. A short YouTube search will show you what I mean.

Edit: added links and fixed spelling mistakes

[Edited on 5-8-2020 by Sigmatropic]

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 16:06

Video https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/noxious-orange-smoke-filmed-...

Nitric acid leak.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2950648/Toxic-orang...

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 16:12

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 16:29

Quote: Originally posted by Sigmatropic

There is no way in knowing what the density of that ship is, it's probably classified, but I'm guessing it's below 1 (g/ml or kg/l).

The density of ammonium nitrate is known to be 1.7 and the prills come in at 1.3 therefore this pile(~2.5 million kilos), assuming prills is supposed to be just over 1900 m3, quite a large pile indeed. The ensuing BFRC is reported unofficially to be also because of the firric rich ground on the site. most (sub tonne) AN blasts appear more brownish in nature, not a deep red. A short YouTube search will show you what I mean.

Edit: added links and fixed spelling mistakes

[Edited on 5-8-2020 by Sigmatropic]

When I saw the news that color.

Someone forget to set up an ice bath in there ?

I suppose a shipping port could have decades of things like rusty anchor chain and iron junk as used as fill.

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 17:14

Well that's what the pile looked like.

[img/]

[Edited on 6-8-2020 by Pyro_cat]

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 17:59

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

pantone159 - 5-8-2020 at 19:01

That picture at the door is consistent with what I read about the warehouse door being worked on earlier that day.
Whether or not the AN went off first this explosion was waiting to happen. Could there maybe have been another warehouse nearby with military explosives (that the Lebanese govt might not be keen to publicise)?
The shock from the AN blast would presumably set of almost anything, whether it was stored well or not.

[Edited on 6-8-2020 by pantone159]

Pyro_cat - 5-8-2020 at 21:49

Quote: Originally posted by pantone159

That picture at the door is consistent with what I read about the warehouse door being worked on earlier that day.
Whether or not the AN went off first this explosion was waiting to happen. Could there maybe have been another warehouse nearby with military explosives (that the Lebanese govt might not be keen to publicise)?
The shock from the AN blast would presumably set of almost anything, whether it was stored well or not.

[Edited on 6-8-2020 by pantone159]

Official story might be true

Here is a a long study on AN they did alot of testing to figure out why this happens

https://www.osmre.gov/resources/blasting/docs/USBM/RI6773Exp...

This one is good too

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-beirut...

They let it get all hard and crusted up that made it worse.

What an epic screw up leaving something that bad ass in a populated area.

Sigmatropic - 5-8-2020 at 21:50

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

much dark red at the top right, exactly!

ShotBored - 6-8-2020 at 05:26

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Quote: Originally posted by pantone159

@pyro_cat Some great expert commentary you posted here. I forgot about the fact that fusion from AN's hygroscopicity over time probably densified the material to a huge degree that would really amplify the shock transition/detonation violence. The pictures definitely support the formation of NOx products that give the cloud its red hue.

I've become slightly sympathetic to the port authorities over the days as it appears they tried regularly to get a judicial declaration that would allow them to get rid of the AN, but were never responded to. I'm sure they are going to be scapegoated regardless, but the judicial officials that ignored them should see their day in court too. The human blunder that caused this is so staggering.

Brightthermite - 6-8-2020 at 09:40

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

That had to just be some fireworks or something exploding before the AN, no way him and the phone would have survived that close.

Pyro_cat - 6-8-2020 at 10:20

Quote: Originally posted by Brightthermite

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

That had to just be some fireworks or something exploding before the AN, no way him and the phone would have survived that close.

He had time to run before the second. Lucky dude found a strong spot.

Check out this super slow motion. Throws a jet of material in one direction before the orange fireball.

I guess that silo deflected it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUUoCD3y6c4

Pyro_cat - 6-8-2020 at 10:27

Quote: Originally posted by Brightthermite

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

That had to just be some fireworks or something exploding before the AN, no way him and the phone would have survived that close.

That first explosion did not look like a firework at all. They were the normal white flashes.

The first real explosion that ended the video from the room full of AN was white-yellow and was so fast. Burned clean . What the heck was that?

Maybe this should just be left alone. World be a better place if everyone believes it was accident.

Pyro_cat - 6-8-2020 at 10:33

Played it back frame by frame, sliding the view thing across. That yellow flash seems to look like that smoke cloud igniting.

Chemetix - 6-8-2020 at 15:50

[Edited on 6-8-2020 by Chemetix]

macckone - 6-8-2020 at 21:12

We recently had a more recent explosion than texas city in the town of west, tx.
The fertilizer plant had improperly stored ammonium nitrate and a fire started, then the AN blew.

At the port of beruit, the warehouse was supposedly about a km from the nearest non-industrial building.
The explosion was actually larger than some tactical nukes based on the blast radius.
Reports are the blast radius was 6 miles or about 9km.

Yes, the cloud looks like nitrogen dioxide fumes.

Vomaturge - 6-8-2020 at 22:01

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Quote: Originally posted by Brightthermite

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

That had to just be some fireworks or something exploding before the AN, no way him and the phone would have survived that close.

the enthalpy of formation of AN is about -365kj/mol.
If we assume its decomposition products are mostly elemental nitrogen and oxygen (with only minimal Nox) and 2mol water(enthalpy of formation -285kj/mol), we get about 204kj/mol energy release. Ignoring the energy tied up in latent heat of evaporation of water, we get about 123 kj/mol of energy available for superheating the decomposition products. We're looking at 16 gm oxygen, 28gm nitrogen, and 36gm steam.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-d_979.html
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/oxygen-d_978.html
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/nitrogen-d_977.html

Using a value for heat capacity at 1000K, we get an energy requirement of very roughly 132 joules to heat the decomposition products from a single mol of AN by 1 C.
This suggests that the temperature of AN will increase by about 930C when it decomposes. Note that this is based on constant pressure conditions. If the reaction happens so quickly that the reaction products aren't able to expand initially (this is the case if it decided to det.) then their specific heatswill be constant volume instead of constant pressure, and the temperature will be somewhat higher. If it is stored near plastic, wood, aluminum, etc, those materials will be incinerated or pulverized almost instantly, and burn in the extremely hot dense 14%O2 fireball.

My point is, a temperature of 1000, conceivably even 2000C could exist in the fireball briefly, with just AN and ordinary debris from the containers. The whole thing looks like a kiloton amount of one of the weaker chemical HE,s. That's not something that could be easily done as a targeted attack. I believe the worlds largest airplane has a maximum *total* takeoff weight thats not quite a kiloton. And it certainly isn't nuclear.

For starters, here's a real time, similarly zoomed video of a low kiloton nuclear burst:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjWFpbGQmk

Note that you don't get a clear view of the expanding fireball in the first few frames, it's smaller, hotter, presumably less dense, and washes out most of the film with its light. After it has stopped expanding and risen off the ground, (corresponding to the stage at Beirut where the fireball was no longer luminescent) the nuclear fireball is still lighting up the area around its base and is overpowering the ambient daylight. This is 1.2kT, a multi megaton fireball might be white-yellow hot a minute after initiation.

Don't even get me started on initial radiation and fallout contamination. If a low kiloton nuclear device had gone off on that peninsula, we'd have somewhere between a few thousand and a few tens of thousand cases of radiation sickness (many fatal) flooding every hospital in beirut. I'll try to find a fallout and prompt radiaton report for that 1.2kt burst,but for now you cand do a rough simulation on NukeMap.

Nitrosio - 7-8-2020 at 04:15

AN: 575 kJ / kg
TNT: 908 kJ / kg

AN : TNT = 0.63

Beirut: 2.75 kt AN = 1.74 kt TNT
Hiroshima: 12.5 kt TNT

Beirut : Hiroshima = 13.93%

unionised - 7-8-2020 at 04:35

It's unlikely that all the AN detonated.

" Initial estimates of the yield of the explosion ranged from hundreds of tons of TNT equivalent, to between 1.0 and 1.5 kilotons. "
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear...

Something like 1 to 10% of the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

Aqua-regia - 7-8-2020 at 06:05

The storagehaus photos are fake. The exploded stoff was ammoniumnitrate technical grade (not agricultural grade this is flegmatised) made in Russia. A russian ship 6 years ago delivered this (cca 2700 mto) for coal and stone mine somewhere to Africa, but near of Beirut had a a big technical problem After that, got the shipper bankrupt the appropriated AN was very bad condition storaged etc.. Such blindness, irresponsibility and inadequacy cant wondering.

Brightthermite - 7-8-2020 at 10:24

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Quote: Originally posted by Brightthermite

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

Close up video of the first explosion but I dont see how the person taking the video could have survived the second one https://twitter.com/i/status/1290726770459672576

That had to just be some fireworks or something exploding before the AN, no way him and the phone would have survived that close.

That first explosion did not look like a firework at all. They were the normal white flashes.

Munition of some sort? Rumors going around that they had confiscaded weapons there
The first real explosion that ended the video from the room full of AN was white-yellow and was so fast. Burned clean . What the heck was that?

Maybe this should just be left alone. World be a better place if everyone believes it was accident.

Munition of some sort? There were rumors they had confiscated munitions but who knows. There literally could have been anything else stored there with the AN. Compressed gas cylinders, fuels and solvents, who knows. I agree tho the twitter video you linked had to be something a bit more hefty then fireworks.

unionised - 7-8-2020 at 10:34

Power lines in fires are a pretty good source of bright white flashes too.

All the people who are saying that "just fireworks" don't cause explosions clearly don't know what they are on about.
This is what happens if you set fire to a shipping container with 6 tons of fireworks (and that's what you would expect in a warehouse at a port).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F55r0JL_lTQ

macckone - 7-8-2020 at 21:06

Just fire can set off AN.
Smaller explosions may have been smaller portions of AN detonating before the whole thing went up.
Given that I would expect other confiscated goods to be stored in the same warehouse there is no telling what was there. It could have been actual bombs that got caught being smuggled or fireworks or counterfeit purses, and chances are the records went up with the warehouse.

simply RED - 8-8-2020 at 02:34

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNDhIGR-83w
Fireworks and AN were stored in the same warehouse. It could have been intentional...

unionised - 8-8-2020 at 03:55

Quote: Originally posted by simply RED

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNDhIGR-83w
Fireworks and AN were stored in the same warehouse. It could have been intentional...

In general, given a choice between assuming something is a cockup or a conspiracy, it's usually safe to assume someone screwed up.

[Edited on 8-8-20 by unionised]

plastics - 8-8-2020 at 05:08

aka Hanlon’s Razor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon’s_razor

Quote: Originally posted by unionised

Quote: Originally posted by simply RED

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNDhIGR-83w
Fireworks and AN were stored in the same warehouse. It could have been intentional...

In general, given a choice between assuming something is a cockup or a conspiracy, it's usually safe to assume someone screwed up.

[Edited on 8-8-20 by unionised]

Pyro_cat - 9-8-2020 at 18:58

New angle uploaded today.

4K footage of Lebanon explosion shows Beirut Port blast unfolding in slow motion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-vGkIKxGAg

Watched it full screen its sharp.

Someone made a compilation set to music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-vGkIKxGAg

There is probably tons more video but I don't think they have any working cell towers left in Beirut for people to be posting things on You Tube right now.

Herr Haber - 11-8-2020 at 04:15

It's really hard not to think these are fireworks popping off before the main explosion.
NH4NO3 will give off gasses before blowing up (if it ever does) that could have worsened the fire.

Good luck to the forensics team. Science and politics are not miscible under normal conditions.

ShotBored - 11-8-2020 at 05:38

Yeah, i no way do I think this was an attack or sabotage. Improperly stored materials in a developing nation is not something that should surprise anybody. As @plastics mentioned, seems like a classic Hanlon's Razor. Really the only folks who are dug into this conspiracy behind it seem to be the one's attempting to inject conspiracy into literally every news story that drops every day. Our quest here is to be logical and to limit conjecture. Every expert account I've read that pyro_cat initially posted as well as others agree that the detonation was a classic AN detonation. What good is the attack speculation when there is literally no evidence other than some shady, grainy videos on youtube that hold about as much weight as the WTC videos?

Fyndium - 11-8-2020 at 12:37

Yes, absolutely, Israel decides to nuke Beirut just for the gags of it, and best part of it, reveal it's neither acknowledged nor denied nuclear arsenal. So, let's see some radioactive residue from beirut. I suppose there are working particle detectors in Lebanon?

It is a well documented fact that AN can and will detonate in mass quantities when exposed to fire, heat and given sufficient time. If you have thousands of tons of it going off, it will make a big mess, even if it doesn't fully detonate, especially if it happens to occur in a middle of a city.

Considering it had an effective blast of over 1 kiloton, it has a surprisingly low body count Several orders of magnitude smaller charges have induced an order of magnitude higher casualties.

[Edited on 11-8-2020 by Fyndium]

ShotBored - 12-8-2020 at 05:49

Quote: Originally posted by Fyndium

Yes, absolutely, Israel decides to nuke Beirut just for the gags of it, and best part of it, reveal it's neither acknowledged nor denied nuclear arsenal. So, let's see some radioactive residue from beirut. I suppose there are working particle detectors in Lebanon?

It is a well documented fact that AN can and will detonate in mass quantities when exposed to fire, heat and given sufficient time. If you have thousands of tons of it going off, it will make a big mess, even if it doesn't fully detonate, especially if it happens to occur in a middle of a city.

Considering it had an effective blast of over 1 kiloton, it has a surprisingly low body count Several orders of magnitude smaller charges have induced an order of magnitude higher casualties.

[Edited on 11-8-2020 by Fyndium]

Exactly. The whole "everything is a conspiracy" is becoming a tired argument really quickly.

caterpillar - 12-8-2020 at 14:19

Pure ammonium nitrate can explode, especially been heated (melted) in large quantities. No problem. The red color of the cloud after the explosion clearly indicates that it was pure ammonium nitrate (I mean, AN without a significant amount of some flammable components- coal, gasoline, and so on). Positive OB, guys. NOx arises under such conditions. BTW, once I was able to initiate the mix AN + Al with a small charge of homemade black powder.

Vomaturge - 12-8-2020 at 18:06

Quote: Originally posted by Fyndium

I agree with all of that except the part about needing particle detectors to prove or disprove if it was nuclear.

Here's a link to a survey of fallout patterns for 2 separate 1.2kT nuclear bursts, one laid on the ground surface (same one I linked a video of in a previous post) and one buried 17ft underground. It's a 13ish mb file, so I didn't upload it. Note on 14 and 15 of the document, there is a map of the contamination for the surface burst, showing the area exposed to 100r/hr an hour after initiation. The area extends about 300 meters upwind of ground zero, and about 3.5km downwind in a strip about 500m across. Note that a person who ignorantly stayed in this area until the worst of the fallout had dissipated (e.g. a week or two) would accumulate about 5x that dose.

The attached document, chapter 8 of Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons, shows that a nuclear device will also create an instantaneous pulse of radiation when it goes off.This is separate from the contamination effects, and figure 8.33a (page 10 of the document) shows 300r of initial radiation at about 800m from a single kiloton device.

For reference, 100r will cause obvious symptoms of radiation poisoning, and 500r is often fatal within in a few weeks.

TL;DR? If a low kiloton nuke had gone off in Beirut, more people would be dying from radiation than from the heat or force of the blast itself.We'd be looking at a few thousand people with distinctive radiation sickness symptoms at a minimum.

Attachment: eonw_8.pdf (5.4MB)
This file has been downloaded 587 times

simply RED - 12-8-2020 at 22:09

Who put the fireworks together with the AN in the same warehouse is most to blame...

chornedsnorkack - 14-8-2020 at 23:51

Quote: Originally posted by simply RED

Who put the fireworks together with the AN in the same warehouse is most to blame...

Well, all of them - at least 7 batches of explosives - were confiscated because they were dangerous at the hands of whoever held them.

Just because government confiscates stuff because it is dangerous in private hands does not mean the stuff stops being dangerous when it is in government hands.

Government has just one dangerous goods warehouse, too small for the loads of dangerous goods confiscated from people? Fine, then there is not enough space to stop fires from spreading, and the whole warehouse goes up in a chain of explosions.

Fantasma4500 - 8-10-2020 at 07:29

one thing people dont realize about AN is that it has a very high gas volume, i believe its 980L/kg where RDX and the like is around 600 or 700
i dont really get why there was fireworks going off before the blast, it seemed planned. first you want to get the AN very hot, maybe even molten, now from the pics its clear to see there was contaminats getting into the bags, this could serve to sensitize the mix, especially if it was iron rich dust
anyhow, israel took the blame saying they bombed the warehouse assuming it was a weapons stash, later on said that the AN was used by terrorists, it was a supply station - just seems too coincidential to me, the NO2 cloud would explain that it wasnt an actual explosive mixture, that the balance was really poor and would also explain that it didnt all go off entirely as seen with many tannerite videos, its possible to set such mixtures off low-order where the nitrogen in the NO2 isnt freed and you miss out on a lot of power
all that aside really nice bang, have we ever gotten that great a view of some blast that majestic?

unionised - 8-10-2020 at 08:17

Quote: Originally posted by Antiswat

i dont really get why there was fireworks going off before the blast,

all that aside really nice bang, have we ever gotten that great a view of some blast that majestic?

Fireworks are easy to set off, They are designed to be; that's why many of them went off first.

Not a really nice bang- it killed over 200 people.

j_sum1 - 8-10-2020 at 15:12

Quote: Originally posted by Antiswat

one thing people dont realize about AN is that it has a very high gas volume, i believe its 980L/kg where RDX and the like is around 600 or 700
i dont really get why there was fireworks going off before the blast, it seemed planned. first you want to get the AN very hot, maybe even molten, now from the pics its clear to see there was contaminats getting into the bags, this could serve to sensitize the mix, especially if it was iron rich dust
anyhow, israel took the blame saying they bombed the warehouse assuming it was a weapons stash, later on said that the AN was used by terrorists, it was a supply station - just seems too coincidential to me, the NO2 cloud would explain that it wasnt an actual explosive mixture, that the balance was really poor and would also explain that it didnt all go off entirely as seen with many tannerite videos, its possible to set such mixtures off low-order where the nitrogen in the NO2 isnt freed and you miss out on a lot of power
all that aside really nice bang, have we ever gotten that great a view of some blast that majestic?

This sounds a bit conspiratorial to me. I am not aware of any credible claims that this was anything but an accident – preventable, but accidental nonetheless.

Pyro_cat - 20-11-2020 at 21:26

This is new, November 20, 2020

https://interestingengineering.com/video/research-team-relea...

ShotBored - 24-11-2020 at 11:02

Quote: Originally posted by Pyro_cat

This is new, November 20, 2020

https://interestingengineering.com/video/research-team-relea...

Their full published paper is free to the public on Wiley's Propellants, Explosives, and Pyrotechnics journal. The team did a great job with their findings and used to fairly cunning procedures to get their results. The nuclear equivalent seemed to be somewhere between the old "Davey Crockett" tactical nukes and the Air-to-Air anti-bomber squadron nukes...don't remember what Americans called it back in the day.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/prep.202000227

I really do hope this finally puts to rest the discussion about whether it was an attack or an accident....I think the evidence is quite clear here that the only "enemy" that caused this senseless loss of human life was pure negligence.

leau - 6-2-2022 at 06:18

Review on Thermal Decomposition of Ammonium Nitrate

SHALINI CHATURVEDI AND PRAGNESH N. DAVE

Journal of Energetic Materials, 31: 1–26, 2013
ISSN: 0737-0652 print=1545-8822 online
DOI: 10.1080/07370652.2011.573523

In this review data from the literature on thermal decomposition of ammonium nitrate (AN) and the effect of additives to their thermal decomposition are summarized. The effect of additives like oxides, cations, inorganic acids, organic compounds, phase-stablized CuO, etc., is discussed. The effect of an additive mainly occurs at the exothermic peak of pure AN in a temperature range of 200 ° C to 140 ° C.

is attached :cool:

Attachment: UEGM_A_5735232finalcopy.pdf (1.2MB)
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[Edited on 6-2-2022 by leau]