On August 4, a major fire broke out in a Port of Beirut warehouse and spread to 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which had been impounded and stored for six years after it was seized from an abandoned ship in 2014. Yes, the common fertilizer ammonium Nitrate was exploded. How do fertilizers which we often think of as just natural elements good for the earth, explode so violently and considered as more dangerous than dynamite. Let's begin with slightly background on fertilizer itself.
Plants need a few of basic nutrients to grow and most of them are found within the air and water things like oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. Of course; they also need another elements which will or might not be rich in the soil they grow in that's where fertilizer comes in. It packs the dirt with the secondary elements needed to form a plant flourish. One of the main components in manufactured fertilizer is ammonium nitrate. Atmospheric nitrogen has a really strong chemical bond that plants can't easily break. So fertilizer companies create a nitrogen-based substance that's much easier for plants to take apart. Ammonium nitrate is one such compound and it's used for good reason. The ammonium part sticks around longer without evaporating. So it's great for decent summer fields and the nitrate is easily used by plants. Even more compelling within the agricultural industry, it's inexpensive to manufacture. You mix ammonia and nitric acid and you're done but what makes nitrate capable of such lethal explosions? Surprisingly, not much truly ammonium nitrate is a comparatively stable compound. In other words, when it's just sitting quietly somewhere ammonium nitrate isn't that big of a problem because it needs a relatively high energy of activation. The energy needed to cause a reaction to explode. However if an accident where some quite detonation sort of a spark or some kind of energy occurs you better believe that nitrate is deadly. The compound essentially makes its own fuel from the ammonium and oxidizer from the nitrate.
So its reaction is violent and long lasting. Once a reaction is sparked ammonium nitrate explodes violently. The explosive force occurs when solid ammonium nitrate decomposes very rapidly into two gases nitrous oxide and water vapor. Quite 100 people were killed and nearly 4 000 people were injured on August 4th during a massive explosion in Lebanon's capital Beirut. The explanation for the explosion was due to 2 700 tons of ammonium nitrate which was stored for 6 years in the warehouse of the port. The impact was felt 200 kilometers radius leading to a huge 3.5 magnitude earthquake.
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