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Sandia Labs Researcher Develops Fertilizer Without the Explosive Potential
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."
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.
I call bullshit! (Literally. Unless you want to be really nasty, that is.)
Ezekiel 23:20
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?
According to the article it acidifies soils which the author finds good for areas with alkaline soils. And he says that some areas of Afghanistan have alkaline soils. Fine, but unless Afghanistan is unlike the rest of the world, some areas will have alkaline soils and some have acidic soils. I happen to have acidic soils on my farm and would never use a fertilizer that would further decrease the pH. We have plenty of iron in the soils here already too.
The cost increase may be low, but they cannot argue that with the added materials and logistics, the cost will be the same in places that already have ammonium nitrate fertilizers in use. Perhaps where their crony governments force farmers to buy calcium carbonate fertilizer it would be cost neutral.
But until hunger is eliminated in the world and all the world has healthy food to eat, governments have no business increasing the cost of food. Far more than 180 have died due to malnutrition since the Murrah building. Governments could trying sticking to courts, police and defense if they want to minimize the incidence of terrorism. And maybe help out with world hunger if they just can't stand sitting on their hands.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Why would I buy this stuff?
Right now you can buy Amonium Nitrate that gives you a ton of readily available nitrogen for your crops at a relatively small cost.
And, in case I need it, I can build a bomb with the stuff, too.
I don't often need to build an IED, but whether it's a stump in your field or a neighbor messing with you or the damn federals raiding your moonshine still, sometimes you need to blow something up. With amonium nitrate, I don't have to buy and store expensive and potentially dangerous explosives just on the off chance I need to blow something sky high.
But this new no-go-boom-fertilizer just takes away the features I'm used to getting for free with my fertilizer. It's like DRM for ag chemicals.
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.
Look st the post-explosion photos and you'll see that the anhydrous ammonia tanks are all intact. They're hard to miss - they're virtually the only thing left standing. BLEVE explosions obliterate the tanks they occur in and throw massive amounts of shrapnel.
Sorry, chief. It was an ammonium nitrate explosion. It was not a BLEVE (note the correct spelling.)
Please help metamoderate.
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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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.
Although iron is typically deficient in soils and adding iron promotes growth, is the amount required to make a high nitrate fertilizer difficult to explode going to poison the soil over a period of several years? Will it make the iron content of foods too high? I don't know. Is there some agricultural expert here that can illuminate the subject?
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Is there anyway to remove this thread from Slashdot so we don't look like people who should be prevented from reproducing?
Your concern is misplaced. To reproduce sexually, an organism has to engage in actual (rather than simulated or conjectured) intercourse with the other gender of the same species.
For the universe of Slashdot readers, a theoretical possibility to be sure, but in actual practice it is of little consequence.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!