Big Bang in Beruit

[polymath257]

An important factor when you wanna blow stuff up is the detonation velocity of the agent used. It shows how fast the chemical reaction can propagate , and this in turn influences the detonation pressure that can build up.

Agents with low detonation speed need to be put in "boxes" to give time to puild up pressure or all you have is a conflagration, kindaa fizzz. How is detonation velocity linked to detonation pressure? Detonation pressure is proportional to the SQUARE of detonation speed (roughly).

Where is Ammonium nitrate on the scale?

Gunpowder: 600 m/s
TNT: ca. 7000
Ammoniumnitrate: 2500

Its much closer to TNT than to gunpowder (which actually is a quite low rated explosive). You defnitely need no strong boxes to create a pressure wave. How does it compare to TNT? Well Detonation speed is 1/3 of TNT and so detonation pressure is 1/10 of TNT. Yet in this case detonation pressure was (still!) 1/10 of that of 3000 tons of TNT!!!!!! three.tousand.tons.of.TNT

ammonium nitrate is considered to have an “effectiveness factor” of 0.42, which means explosion of ton of ammonium nitrate is equal in destructive potential to 0.42 tons of TNT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

So this detonation is on the order of a 1 kiloton tactical nuclear weapon.

I saw a factor of .73 used, so there appears to be some variance here. None-the-less, a 1-2KT explosion is good sized.