Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
Yesterday, I discussed ammonium nitrate, an industrial fertilizer. One problem with it is its lavish reactivity. On its own, and particularly in combination with hydrocarbons, it makes a potent explosive - it was used in the attack on Oklahoma City in the 1990's.
Apparently, adding a different counterion makes a world of difference. This week, Honeywell reported a new fertilizer, Sulf-N26, which is just a mix of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate. Apparently, it doesn't support the explosive combustion of fuel oil like pure ammonium nitrate does.
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Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion
Oppau, Germany 21 September 1921. 4500 tonnes of ammonium sulfate-ammonium nitrate double salt fetilizer went whoopsie. Nothing extraordinary happened during 20,000 prior firings. You can't condemn a huge and successful program for a single failure.
Posted by: Uncle Al | September 24, 2008 3:40 PM
A mixture of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate has a higher VoD than ammonium nitrate on it's own. How's that for safety.
Posted by: Gruson | September 24, 2008 7:36 PM
Don't plants like most of their N as nitrate anyway?
Posted by: Lab Lemming | September 28, 2008 1:33 AM
ah ammonium sulfate, also very useful for isolating proteins, different proteins crash out of solution at different concentrations of ammonium sulfate. it's rather crude but it gets the job done
Posted by: mike | October 3, 2008 11:53 PM