Huge soot from the explosion
Recently, a violent explosion occurred in the port area of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, which not only killed and injured 3,000 people there, but also left at least 300,000 people homeless in Lebanon. Judging from the current official Lebanese news, it is likely that the 2750 tons of sodium nitrate that can be used as a fertilizer raw material previously stored in the port area are caused. The 3.3-magnitude earthquake caused by the explosion at the port and the mushroom cloud seen by the local people are enough to show how powerful the explosion is. For many people, the explosion was like an atomic bomb. The culprit of all this is sodium nitrate, which can be used as a raw material, which also makes many people puzzled.
For the local population, the explosion was comparable to a nuclear explosion
I believe that many people have difficulty believing, why do we know and contact a lot of fertilizer in our daily life have such a dangerous explosion, does this also mean that all fertilizers will have such an explosion? To understand this problem, we must first start with the physical phenomenon of the explosion and the basic structure of the explosive. From the physical manifestation of the explosion, it is to quickly release a large amount of energy in a short period of time, and then compress the surrounding solid liquid gas at an extremely fast speed, which produces a destructive effect in the situation of the shock wave. Both the chemical explosion in the port area of Beirut and the atomic bomb that exploded in Nagasaki and Hiroshima belong to the same physical phenomenon.
Sodium calcium nitrate
Of all the chemical elements, nitrogen is always one of the most suitable for explosions. The sodium nitrate that occurred in this accident has both positive valent nitrogen (nitrogen in nitrate) and negative valence nitrogen (nitrogen in ammonium ions). If you look at the composition of sodium nitrate (NH4NO3), this is a very perfect specimen of explosives. Because ammonium nitrate has both an oxidant and a reducing agent, this makes ammonium nitrate extremely susceptible to redox reactions. This means that ammonium nitrate can explode violently in a short period of time and spread all the energy around.
The explosion took a huge toll
Judging from the explosion and the information released by the Lebanese government afterwards, the batch of 2750 tons of sodium nitrate has been stored in the region for 6 years. In this process, although the relevant Lebanese authorities have held accountable for the storage security measures of this batch of ammonium nitrate. However, due to the relatively chaotic political and security situation in Lebanon, this accountability was later lost. This will also lay the groundwork for this big explosion.
The consequences of inadequate security measures
It should be known that in the past, when the fertilizer with sodium nitrate as raw material - ammonium nitrate fertilizer just entered China, there were farmers who used blunt instruments to knock on the damp fertilizer and cause an explosion accident. As a product that has been passivated, ammonium nitrate fertilizer is far less likely to have a chemical reaction than sodium nitrate, and even so, there are still a large number of accidents every year. Lebanon, on the other hand, did not have perfect security measures when storing these chemically reactive ammonium nitrates, and it was only a matter of time before an explosion occurred.
Nitrogen is widely used in the military field
Nitrogen has always been widely used in the agricultural field, but also in the military field. Many of the explosives used in modern weapons use nitro and carbon-nitrogen molecular architectures, while ballistic missiles and other solid-fueled missiles, whether azide propellants or nitrogen anionic salts, are also inseparable from the presence of nitrogen. However, we do not have to worry about the safety of chemical fertilizers now, because with the emergence of urea, ammonium bicarbonate and various organic fertilizers, ammonium nitrate fertilizer products have been gradually phased out.
Author: Shan He Deceased