Massive explosion in Beirut

[GH85Carrera]

2,700 tons of ANFO must be worth a LOT of money. I bet there are dozens of companies that would have jumped on a chance to suck it up and sail away and pay for the honor to haul it off.

Evidently Anfo is 210 to 260 per ton new from China. So figure $200 per ton and it is over half a million. Why not sell it off? Who knows.

https://www.made-in-china.com/products-search/hot-china-products/Ammonium_Nitrate_Price.html

[sc_rufctr]

Just for info... To set ANFO off you need an initiation with a shock wave.
Could an exploding firework provide that shock wave? Maybe but not likely IMO.

Back in the day we used a stick of dynamite inside a bag of ANFO to set it off. They were 20 kg bags and we used one stick per bag. They were set off with Det cord and a blasting cap. And our farmers use ANFO to lift tree stumps when clearing land.

Ammonium nitrate is mixed with Diesel at a specific ratio to make ANFO. If you get that ratio wrong it wont be explosive. You can also add powdered aluminium to "boost" it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO

IMO We'll never be told the truth of what happened in this instance.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

I wonder how this place did:

https://www.kellerag.com/en/projects/beirut-terraces/

Amazing building. Far from the blast, but a lot of glass.

[porsche4life]

Bigger version of the photo posted before. Crazy to see that it made a crater that big.

[Tobra]

Wow, pretty amazing those ships are still floating

[sammyg2]

In this before/after pic it looks like there's a ship near the top of the pic that got capsized maybe?
You can also see also all the buildings that are gone.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Just for info... To set ANFO off you need an initiation with a shock wave.
Could an exploding firework provide that shock wave? Maybe but not likely IMO.

Back in the day we used a stick of dynamite inside a bag of ANFO to set it off. They were 20 kg bags and we used one stick per bag. They were set off with Det cord and a blasting cap. And our farmers use ANFO to lift tree stumps when clearing land.

Ammonium nitrate is mixed with Diesel at a specific ratio to make ANFO. If you get that ratio wrong it wont be explosive. You can also add powdered aluminium to "boost" it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO

IMO We'll never be told the truth of what happened in this instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

In this before/after pic it looks like there's a ship near the top of the pic that got capsized maybe?
You can also see also all the buildings that are gone.

Sammy, those are actual satellite photos. The before pick might be a year or more before the explosion. For the commercial satellites they don't photograph everything all the time. Clouds, and such are a real issue. Also if no one is paying for a constant update, they don't waste the effort. Military surveillance is a totally different thing.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

Yes I'm aware of the dangers of incorrectly storing ammonium nitrate but my post was about my own experience preparing and using ANFO when I was in the Army.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Sammy, those are actual satellite photos. The before pick might be a year or more before the explosion. For the commercial satellites they don't photograph everything all the time. Clouds, and such are a real issue. Also if no one is paying for a constant update, they don't waste the effort. Military surveillance is a totally different thing.

so all the sudden you're an expert on aerial photography?
J/k

For those out there who don't know, he actually is.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Yes I'm aware of the dangers of incorrectly storing ammonium nitrate but my post was about my own experience preparing and using ANFO when I was in the Army.

Understood.

[GH85Carrera]

We have only had to deal with a couple of satellite companies. For some reason when the spend millions of dollars launching a satellite they want a LOT of money for new images. Staggering money.

Our client wanted us to get the images and we did. Shot from 200 miles up they were not too bad. Our updated images from our airplane at 2,500 feet made their image look like it was from toy camera with cheap plastic lenses.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Just for info... To set ANFO off you need an initiation with a shock wave.
Could an exploding firework provide that shock wave? Maybe but not likely IMO.

Back in the day we used a stick of dynamite inside a bag of ANFO to set it off. They were 20 kg bags and we used one stick per bag. They were set off with Det cord and a blasting cap. And our farmers use ANFO to lift tree stumps when clearing land.

Ammonium nitrate is mixed with Diesel at a specific ratio to make ANFO. If you get that ratio wrong it wont be explosive. You can also add powdered aluminium to "boost" it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO

IMO We'll never be told the truth of what happened in this instance.

Things are trickier in the safety realm - you, with your dynamite and ANFO were working on the "performance" side of things. You'd have been a little salty if all the charge did was spread some fertilizer around so therefore you did everything right to get something reliable.

Mother nature, screwing with us in the safety world, is patient and more than happy to fail until one day she doesn't.

AN classically needs shock, but it can develop its own through a deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT). Given enough of it, that isn't too hard. Think of something burning/deflagrating - it burns hotter and faster so the pressure goes up, when the pressure goes up it burns hotter and faster. Lather, rinse and repeat.

That's how the detonators on the 75-years-old-in-4-days Nagasaki bomb worked - and how those on many of our SLBMs and ICBMs still work today.

[Tobra]

Maybe someone shooting fireworks into the warehouse to set it alight, like Antifa, The fertilizer was already there, and had been percolating in the heat of Beirut for a few years, so did they toss in balloons filled with coal oil too? I wonder if it would even be possible to figure that out, following such a large explosion

[RWebb]

Similar accidents have happened several times.

GalvezTown, TX - was it '57? '47?

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by mjohnson

Things are trickier in the safety realm - you, with your dynamite and ANFO were working on the "performance" side of things. You'd have been a little salty if all the charge did was spread some fertilizer around so therefore you did everything right to get something reliable.

Mother nature, screwing with us in the safety world, is patient and more than happy to fail until one day she doesn't.

AN classically needs shock, but it can develop its own through a deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT). Given enough of it, that isn't too hard. Think of something burning/deflagrating - it burns hotter and faster so the pressure goes up, when the pressure goes up it burns hotter and faster. Lather, rinse and repeat.

That's how the detonators on the 75-years-old-in-4-days Nagasaki bomb worked - and how those on many of our SLBMs and ICBMs still work today.

Yeah, what he said



When I was a little kid, dad would sit me up on the chair in front of a chalkboard he had and he'd teach me things.
One day he was teaching me chem E stuff, covalent bonds, reactions.
I was probably 10 or 11.
He got on a tangent and described the process to manufacture glyceryl trinitrate.
So being a sooper genius, I took that tiny bit of knowledge to school with me. Now I couldn't actually make the stuff, but I could talk about it and act cool in front of other kids.
A teacher found out and next thing ya know, dad gets a call and had to leave work go to the school.
That was the end of the explosives lessons

He worked at this Hercules powder company plant at the time and knew the guys:
https://www.nytimes.com/1962/08/24/archives/3-killed-as-rocket-fuel-explodes-in-utah-plant.html

[vash]

That one guy that caught the main explosion (on Twitter) was amazing. The video is breathtaking.