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Sandia Labs Researcher Develops Fertilizer Without the Explosive Potential

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-boom-for-you dept.

cylonlover writes "Ammonium nitrate is a commonly used fertilizer, but when mixed with a fuel such as diesel, it makes a powerful explosive – as seen in last week's fertilizer plant explosion in Texas. But it's the deliberate use of the compound in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and acts of terror such as the Oklahoma City bombing that gives rise to even greater cause for concern. This is why Kevin Fleming, an optical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, developed a fertilizer alternative that isn't detonable and therefore can't be used in a bomb."

8 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Useless .... by pollarda · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are way too many things you can fashion into explosives. For example, chicken manure has enough nitrates in it you can use it as a replacement for ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate / Fuel Oil.) Knowing our government however, they would use this as an excuse to genetically engineer chickens with lower nitrate poop then try to ban all other varieties.

    1. Re: Useless .... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unless you are gonna stick a gun to their head and force them to switch why should they? Knowing this stuff will end up being more expensive so you expect them to waste millions, possibly billions, because some of their product is used to blow up soldiers of a country the majority there isn't fond of anyway? Not bloody likely.

      So the only way you'll get them to switch is bribe them or bomb them, otherwise they have absolutely zero reason to care. Fertilizer is a billion dollar business and even raising the cost a dime could shift who gets these huge contracts so unless you believe the American taxpayer should yet again foot the bill so that it costs them nothing or is more profitable to use the new stuff i just don't see most of the third world switching. After all all it will do for them is raise costs, IEDs aren't really that high on the radar from their point of view.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re: Useless .... by nametaken · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Curious. Doesn't the price per bag for fertilizer going from $4 to $100 make it prohibitively expensive for it's normal use as fertilizer?

      Was there a considerable reduction in the number of IED's since the price skyrocketed?

    3. Re: Useless .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You'll have to limit the amount of salt available to people then. Ordinary NaCl can be converted into NaCl3 easily. As can KCl be converted into KClO3. A very crude electrochemical cell can make the chlorates quite easily, without requiring any exotic materials, or leaving much of a "telltale footprint".

      And a kg of KClO3/NaClO3 + fuel is going to produce a significantly nastier boom than a kg of blackpowder, as used in the Boston bombs.

      At the end of the day a "war on precursors" has to go so far up the chain of precursors that it becomes ludicrous. The starting products in the making of
          Ammonium Nitrate, for example, are AIR and WATER. Granted, you need a big iron pressure-vessel to do the conversion, but if you don't care about
          the rate at which you turn out "product", it doesn't need to be very big.

  2. Questions by puddingebola · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Ammonium nitrate can be synthesized with Nitric acid and Ammonia. Are these that hard to come by in Afghanistan or Pakistan? 2. Purification would probably just require you finding something that is soluble with Ammonium Nitrate and not Iron Sulfate, or vice versa. Maybe that would be harder than I'm thinking it would be. Maybe some other method would be possible (magnetic?). 3. Any long term environmental consequences to building up Iron compounds in soils over generations of use? Is there an ecologist or an agronomist in the house?

  3. Re: Did you read the summary??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Did you read the summary? First line: "Ammonium nitrate is a commonly used fertilizer, but when mixed with a fuel such as diesel, it makes a powerful explosive – as seen in last week's fertilizer plant explosion in Texas." Your parent points out that the explosion in Texas does not demonstrate that it makes a powerful explosive when mixed with diesel. The explosion in Texas demonstrated that it's pretty explosive all on its own.

    The interesting thing is that this heightened interest in ANFO seems to have been caused by two explosions that did not involve ANFO. The explosion in Texas was straight AN. The explosions at the Boston Marathon were powered by gunpowder. It's possible that the next explosion could be caused by ANFO, but that's not the current problem.

    The big issue here is that we could stop treating farmers buying fertilizer as potential terrorists. They could buy all of this new fertilizer that they wanted without triggering terror checks. That doesn't really make us safer (the current system seems to be successful at preventing ANFO's use in terrorism), but it would make farmers' lives easier. Frankly, I think that that would be a good thing.

  4. Why Is Terrorism Worse? by Bob9113 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But it's the deliberate use of the compound in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and acts of terror such as the Oklahoma City bombing that gives rise to even greater cause for concern.

    Why? If the number of people dying from industrial accidents is greater than the number dying from terrorism, shouldn't we be focusing on the greater threat to human life? Particularly given that the explosion in Texas looks like it was caused, at least in part, by lax regulatory compliance.

    The only reason I can see for terrorism being worse is that it terrifies us. But the rational solution for that is, colloquially, to grow a pair. Stop saying things like "terrorism is a greater cause for concern" when it is not. Be rational, and help the public to be rational -- stop adding to the emotionalistic, irrational fear of terrorism.

    The reason-for-being of terrorism is asymmetric warfare. That only works if a society offers the asymmetric, panicky response that terrorism is meant to induce. Stop contributing to that by claiming that a statistically smaller threat is a greater concern.

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  5. Re: Did you read the summary??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There was a huge explosion back in 1917: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
    That actually started the trend of mining use of ANFO as a safe explosive.

    The chemical companies do not just make Ammonia Nitrate for fertilizer _ALONE_, as there are other industrial uses for the chemical. So your comment would only apply to Fertilizer plants alone.

    This is a knee jerk reaction and not something new. If there were a safe way to handle _OTHER_ industrial uses for the chemical, they would have done so in the 90+ years of know the explosive properties.