chemaddict - 26-2-2014 at 02:25
Hi everyone just would like to ask a question about an explosion that happened at a mine site i was working.
First what happened was the mine drilled and laid ammonium nitrate in the ground ready for blasting when we had a lot of rain for about a week or more
and this caused the explosives to get wet ,the problem is the mine can only leave them in the ground for 10 days so they had to detonate it
anyway,when they did the the whole sky was like a apocalyptic seen all red for as far as you could see,when it came over us we had to run into a
building and shut all doors and windows because we could not breath the scenes were like you could not believe,they are in a lot of shit with the
environment protection agency.
From my knowledge of what happened was they did not get complete combustion of the ammonium nitrate and then created large amounts of oxides of
nitrogen and sulphur in the air.
could someone tell me what other chemicals we could of been exposed to due to these conditions as i am not to familiar with explosives and there
combustable by products.
thanks chemaddict
blogfast25 - 26-2-2014 at 05:42
Red brown fumes could indeed point to NO<sub>2</sub>, a poisonous gas that would make anyone flee because of its strong, highly unpleasant
odour and the effect it has on airways.
But ammonium nitrate usually doesn't decompose that way. Here you're ammonium nitrate was wet but I still have some difficulty in seeing how this
could generate nitric oxide (NO2).
I assume that by ammonium nitrate you mean 'ammonium nitrate fuel oil' mixture?
I think this would be worth deep Googling for, because if your description is right this occurrence is unlikely to have been the only one ever.
Sulphur oxides could only occur if there's a source of sulphur. Unless you're using gunpowder as explosive that's very unlikely.
The second search result of this search:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UT...
... shows an interesting *.pdf, jam packed with data on the explosive behaviour of AN and ANFO, including the influence of moisture. Worth
downloading, IMHO...
[Edited on 26-2-2014 by blogfast25]