The barrels had been stored in a warehouse with varying humidity for 6 years, so it is believed that they were ignited by friction with their nitrate-impregnated manila paper lining. On April 4, 1925, and May 3, 1925, two carloads, each containing 220 barrels of ammonium nitrate, were dispatched from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and caught fire in transportation. The explosiveness of the product was perhaps enhanced, as it had been prepared using nitric acid that had previously been used for the production of TNT. ġ924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster: On March 1, 1924, at 11:15 a.m., a fire and several large explosions destroyed a warehouse containing 2,200 kilograms (4,800 lb) of ammonium nitrate at the Nixon Nitration Works. Only 450 tonnes exploded, out of 4500 tonnes of fertilizer stored in the warehouse.
It is thought that, on this occasion, poor mixing had led to certain parts of the mass containing more ammonium nitrate than others. The fertilizer was a 50:50 mixture of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate and the factory had used this method of disaggregation over 20,000 times without incident. Įxplosion at BASF plant Oppau: Another attempt at disaggregation of a fertilizer mix with industrial explosives caused the death of 561 people and left more than 2,000 injured. When mining explosives were used on this solid mass the wagons exploded and killed nineteen people. On July 26, 1921, in this railway town (now in Poland) workers tried to dislodge 30 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had aggregated (solidified into one mass) in two wagons. The shock wave was felt at a distance of 11 kilometres (7 mi). The speculated cause was impurities within the nitric acid used to produce the ammonium nitrate. plant suffered an explosion of 1,400 kilograms (3,000 lb) of ammonium nitrate, while concentrating it in a pan by evaporation.
MUSCLE SHOALS FORKLIFT ACCIDENT WINDOWS
The blast at the Explosives Loading Company killed 115 people and shattered windows in Southend-on-Sea across the Thames Estuary while the tremor was felt in Norwich. The Great Explosion: On April 2, 1916, at 14:20, a factory in Uplees, Faversham, exploded after a fire spread to a store of 25 tons of TNT and 700 tons of ammonium nitrate. In an evaporating pan of the Repauno works, du Pont Co., 1,800 kilograms (4,000 lb) of ammonium nitrate exploded, possibly caused by a clogged air lance leading to overheating of the nitrate. The column AN states the amount of ammonium nitrate consumed in the disaster in metric tonnes. This is a well-known hazard with some types of NPK fertilizers and is responsible for the loss of several cargo ships. Pure AN is stable and will stop decomposing once the heat source is removed, but when catalysts are present, the reaction can become self-sustaining (known as self-sustaining decomposition, or SSD). However, there are numerous cases when even impure AN did not explode in a fire.Īmmonium nitrate decomposes in temperatures above 210 ☌ (410 ☏).
Pure, compact AN is stable and very difficult to initiate. The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion (a phenomenon known as "deflagration to detonation transition", or DDT).
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