Sciencemadness Discussion Board

C-Anfo: Prilled or powdererd?

oneup - 22-1-2006 at 10:51

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to ask this, if not i'm sorry just close the topic.
Can you make C-ANFO without crushing the prills? it would be a lot easier to make larger ammounts of it. my C-AN is in the form of brown prills.

Coolio - 22-1-2006 at 11:10

whats the meaning of C ??

catalysator or coal ?

but i think it couldn`t be coal because AN plus 2% somthing what is able to burn is an explosive...so its illegal.


Do you know "ultimate chopper" ?

its some kind of strong blender for kitchen work.....I always use to hackle my AN,coal,naclo3,citric acid ....

and it goes fast....prilles in it, 5 seconds on the ON button and ready

oneup - 22-1-2006 at 13:10

The C stands for calcium.
That's the impurity added to the AN for some reason i dunno.
In convential means the an is dissolved in water, the calcium carbonate sinks to the bottom and the clear an solution is boiled down. fuel oil is mixed with that.
another way is to use prilled AN, BUT pure. yet another way is to crush the CAN prills and add the fuel oil to that. my question is can I use the impure amonium nitrate (it's arround 75%AN 25% Calcium compounds, mostly carbonate but it's brown so it can't be all carbonate) without crushing the prills, just adding the fuel oil to the prills.

Fulmen - 22-1-2006 at 14:23

Me thinks CAN is ammonium nitrate mixed with calcium nitrate, not calcium carbonate. Not sure if it's formulated for purely agricultural reasons or because it won't work in explosives, but I do have a sneaky feeling it's the second alternative.

Anyway, fertilizer grades aren't really suitable for explosives as they have little to no ability to absorb the fuel. Your best bet will be to powder it well or activate it by adding a few % of water, letting it soak inn for a couple of hours and then dry it.

Esplosivo - 22-1-2006 at 14:42

Calcium carbonate might be useful in agriculture, to reduce the acidity of certain soils and thus elevating soil pH to support growth of certain plants which do not cope in an acidic substratum.

[Edited on 22-1-2006 by Esplosivo]

DeAdFX - 22-1-2006 at 14:53

Different situation but I always powdered my ammonium nitrate. I experminted with different ammonium nitrate based propellants.

Taaie-Neuskoek - 22-1-2006 at 17:01

It is carbonate, as the crap can be filtered out, I assume that you are talking about 'kalkammonsalpeter', where 'kalk' is the Dutch word for chalk. Calcium is usefull for plants as it is an importand signalling molecule, and is indeed often used as the carbonate to increase the pH of the soil. (Though plants need an acidic soil for a number of reasons, but that's offtopic...:P)
Can't you powder it in a coffeegrinder? Those are not too expensive new (20 E at 'Blokker'), and probably even cheaper somewhere 2nd hand. Or try to find a 2nd hand blender, they can handle a bit more volume. Crushing prills in a coffeegrinder goes really, really quick, within 5sec. operating they will be fine enough for your purpose, but it will take an afternoon to get a lot through.
A 2nd hand blender would be an ideal solution I think.

Boomer - 23-1-2006 at 01:34

"...a lot easier to make larger ammounts ..." sound not too good to me. If a minute per pound in a blender is too slow for you, what are you planning to make? 100+ pounds?

And yes, it is Ca carbonate, and sometimes Mg carbonate. It is given on the sack as CaO or MgO content, with 27% nitrogen, i.e. 3/4 is AN.

The prills will *not* work in ANFO, they are pressed so hard the do not absorb fuel. Even if crushed the mix is close to un-detonable, though IRA found a way to use it.
But they use 3000 pound with a 20 pound booster! You are better off re-crystallizing the pure AN, if activated well even 100g will work in a plastic tube!

ANd please don't try a monster blast, it only draws attention!

Fulmen - 23-1-2006 at 01:52

You're right, looks like it's AN with a bit of CaCO3 and MgCO3. I think it should work "as is" if properly activated, take a look at US patent 4093478 (part of the Kinepak-patent by Jerry Ico).

froot - 23-1-2006 at 02:16

Just to confirm what has been said, here it's called LAN (limestone ammonium nitrate) and it's a lawn fertiliser. I extract it by dissolving, filtering and evapouration -> heat drying.
I have made a liter of HNO3 with it before by adding the prills, as they are, into sulfuric acid and distilling. The acid is a golden yellow colour and fumes profusely.

oneup - 23-1-2006 at 04:24

TN: Yes I mean 'kalkammonsalpeter'
It's simply not true that it only contains calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate as impurity, the prills are brown and calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate and ammonium nitrate are all white. there must be something else in it too.
And right now I wont draw much attention at all with monster blasts becouse this month the army is doing some kind of training and we hear massive explosions about 2 times a day, sometimes i can here the windows vibrate.

Fulmen - 23-1-2006 at 04:34

It's virtually impossible to make any conclusions based on color, it can be anyting from small amounts of impurities to dyes (I've seen fertilizer dyed in almost every color of the rainbow). Can you post full specs or the producer/brand?

oneup - 23-1-2006 at 05:42

hmm I don't know what the brand is I threw away the bag to put it in air-tight glass jars. But you guys say you can't make ANFO with CAN prills. I've seen commercial ANFO in prilled form. (or does this only work with 100% pure AN?)
Edit: I usually do about 5 pounds ANFO (a little over 2Kg)

[Edited on 23-1-2006 by oneup]

quicksilver - 24-1-2006 at 06:42

The preperation of the prill is extremely importantant to the over all effectivness of an ANFO agent. The Hurst patents showed that by the administration of a small amount of water (0.75-1%) and the "baking" of the prills how they become more absorbant and "phased". The "baking" is the exposure of the prill to 34 C for approx 3 hours (although there are other techniques) the prill chages density level and becomes more sensitive to exposure to initiation ("cap sensitivity"). The "Cap Sensitive ANFO" is not a theory; it can be done; but not on an industrial level due to cost factor. If the AN were to be "baked" in the prescribed manner the cost factor would sky-rocket and the whole idea of using ANFO would be less attractive to the mining companies that now use it. Calcium nitrate itself can be made into a useful blasting agent just as AN can; there are a host of patents on just that subject. One of the most interesting things about some prills is that by crushing them they become more sensitive. There was a time when DuPont went to great lengths to eliminate crushed prills. Now DuPont sells crushed AN as a type of ANFO prep. The pre-mixed ANFO comes in 25and 100kg bags. Not all ANFO products come from the cement mixer-type trucks. The pre-mixed ANFO contains an anti-setteling agent to retain the fuel. Cost factors are marginalized for mining concerns that don't have a roadway large enough to the blast sites for the trucks to make it. So they pay extra for the bags. Most of those bages are huge tubes that can fit in many boreholes; thus precluding water getting into the blasting agent. AN must be vertually anhydrous for it to be of value. Any water before or after mixing ruins the work.

Coolio - 24-1-2006 at 07:45

ok guys,

I tested 10 kg KAS ANFO-K (Catalysator) last summer ,...Booster: 200g HAPAN (for normal anfo-k only 50g are reqired..)

And of the 10 kg just around one kg detonated,....and everything was dry.

Its just a waste of time and fertilizer.

Its really neccesary for Anfo explosives that the An ist pure...

nitro-genes - 24-1-2006 at 09:29

One of the more sensitive anfo compositions I have ever made was detonable in 4 cm diameter, strong paper tubes with a 750 mg PETN detonator.

Starting with KAS, I first filtered out al the MgO and the solution was boiled down to the point decomposition became visible.
To that cooled solution was added dishwash detergent and 5,5% Sunfloweroil. (the 5,5% is relative to the amount of AN in the solution) This was then baked at the lowest temperature the oven could handle with the ovendoor slightly ajar...

Drying time can be reduced quite a bit by crushing the Anfo every few hours before putting it back into the oven. Only 8-10 hours was sufficient. (which is still quite long) The Anfo becomes slightly yellow when it becomes more anhydrous which is a good marker for when it is ready...2% Iron oxide was then added and mixed thoroughly through the Anfo..The result is a very fluffy powder, which doesn't separate. The baking of the oil together with the AN makes the oil turn into a hard fat beacuse of additions to the double bonds that make it an oil.

The oven part may seem a bit dangerous but I never put more than half a kilo in the oven at once, and I made sure that the anfo was a in thin layer. (explosives need a critical diameter to detonate)

[Edited on 24-1-2006 by nitro-genes]

oneup - 24-1-2006 at 10:16

Sunfloweroil in ANFO? i've never heard of that.
but the thing about critical diameter is true, I once tried to make detcord by filling a tube with an inner diameter of 0.5cm with nitroglycerin. Only a few centimeters detonated.

Coolio - 24-1-2006 at 10:37

@ nitro genes

I think the effort of your method is really to big.

I just mix 5kg KAS with 5 Litres HOT water and then I wait for 3 days...the K is set down to the bottom so you can decant the AN Solution....

Then I cook 1,5 litres of this solution for about an half our..., let it become hard , then i hackle it with my ultimate chopper...and then i give it into the ofen for about 2 hours at 100C°..

ready....

nitro-genes - 24-1-2006 at 15:02

It is not realy that big an effort. Every step is the same, I only add the oil with the detergent to the boiled down AN solution and then put it in the oven. My drying time is much longer but my hightech-automated-thermostat-equiped oven can do this al by itself! :P

To be honest nobody I know gets fully dried AN bij putting it in the oven for 2 hours, certainly not in quantaties of a kilo. :o

Fully dried AN when put in the blender creates this fine mist of very irritating airborne AN. It doesn't stick to anything, not even dry skin and it has an incredibily low density...

For the ANNM you use it is less a problem, in fact a few %'s of water make ANNM more sensitive! But have you ever tested your ANFO with a small blastingcap only? My point was that this method creates highly sensitive ANFO :)


[Edited on 24-1-2006 by nitro-genes]

quicksilver - 25-1-2006 at 07:46

Below is enclosed the original Hurst KINEPAC patent. The information on preperation of the prill (or AN grinding) is exceedingly valuable. It answers a lot of questions and opens up new concepts. For instance the use of NM is not nesessary if a subsitute nitroalkane is used with xylene. Xylene balence and cap sensitivity is explored. As well as the fact that we are talking about a #6 cap here gentelmen! This becomes a very sensitive composition :o

Attachment: AN-patent_hurst_2.rar (9kB)
This file has been downloaded 1136 times

Coolio - 25-1-2006 at 11:00

hm my AN is nearly completely without water after two hours...but I put about 3/4 kg in our high tech 10 year old ofen. :P

the anfo-k detonatet at amounts of 300g with 50g HAPAN booster..---- I think thats sensetive enough because I don`t use anfo-k amounts under two kg

Boomer - 26-1-2006 at 02:25

"... nearly completely without water after two hours"

The trick is to have lots of air move over it. It dries better on a radiator with a blower at 50C than at 90C in an oven with door slightly ajar.

To see if it is completely dry you put the HOT powder into a glass jar and into the fridge. ANY moisture will give itself away by condensation on the inside. Even stuff I thought was dry (pan dried at 140C, close to melting) condensed.

My method is boiling the sln down till 180C, and letting solidify with stirring to get soft lumps instead of a hard cake. This has *approx* 3% water left, OK for distilling NA. Once solid, but above 100C, I crush the lumps and keep on low heat with stirring. When it is anhydrous it turns from slightly dirty white to snow white.

But then again, I use only a pound per month, and mostly for synths. Hardly det over 50 grams.

enhzflep - 23-6-2006 at 03:16

Although this thread has been dead for some time now, I was lucky enough to have some jpegs, htmls and a link emailed to me this last week of some rather spectacular shots and thought a few fellow readers here may appreciate them.

The shots on the beach are the results of the blaster using 9.3kg finely blended CAN soaked for 5 hours in 700 grams desiel, using a booster made from 1kg APAN and a 1g AP detonater. Apparently, the charge was buried 1.5 meters deep and set off electrically 60m away by the rather nervous blaster who was lying down in a trench dug into the sand. On detonationg he got covered in shit... :D

Whilst not ANFO, the shots in the field are similarly awesome. In this instance, the charge was a total of 20 kilos of Sodium Chlorate mixed with Nitrobenzene. Fired with a PETN booster of unspecified size and a detonator of unknown specs.

Here is a link to the 13MB video (no sound) of the beach shot
http://rapidshare.de/files/22497917/ANFO_10k_-_Beach1.mpg.ht...

And in the attachment, you'll see a quick couple of stills from each det.

Hope you enjoy. original post to be found at RS.org under "Got 5m crater?"

Oh, one last thing - You think the crater in the field is decent? Wait till you see the video ;)

That's one kiwi I won't be pissing off....

[Edited on 23-6-2006 by enhzflep]

HUGE Blasts.jpg - 151kB

simply RED - 23-6-2006 at 11:50

What is HAPAN?

APAN I know, but that H?

DeAdFX - 23-6-2006 at 16:05

Hydroxyl Ammonium Perchlorate Ammonium Nitrate ?

enhzflep - 23-6-2006 at 18:09

Though I was unable to locate another occurance of the letters HAPAN on this forum, if they've appeared in the post I made above this is an error. The booster was good old "garden variety" Acetone Peroxide mixed with Ammonium Nitrate. (But 1kg of that :o)

The hardest part about replicating these results is the location of a suitably uninhabited part of the earth to test on. Given that a turkey set off ~4kg of anfo in aust a number of years ago and the blast was heard for IIRC 20km, this won't be a trivial matter :D
Nor would the aquisition of that much AN without attracting the attention of those assigned the job of preventing this shit from happening.

But hey, they're a couple a nice pics and a pretty good vid. Just couldn't keep them to myself, you know.

Chris The Great - 23-6-2006 at 23:17

If I find a suitable location this summer, I will be doing a huge-ass AN based blast.

Also important, does anyone know an easy way to dig a 2m+ deep whole in dirt, wide enough for a large plastic paint bucket? I'd prefer not to dig all day with a shovel or have to carry a big gas powered drill on a big roadtrip to nowhere. I mean, I could stand digging all day but I would prefer not to have to.

This crazy ass plan was as a direct result from seeing the 10kg blast in the sand, it was just too impressive to pass up doing myself.

enhzflep - 24-6-2006 at 01:04

The only thing that springs to mind is a technique used when diiging ditches or dams, as described in either the blasters training manual or the dupont blasters hand-book (think I got the titles correct)

In the text I've written, one would dig a pilot hole first with a ~4inch post-hole digger.
Following this a reasonably small blast would be detonated at the bottom of this hole to create a large cavity at the bottom of a reasonably thin shaft. Following this, the ANFO would be poured in, the detonator inserted and the hole backfilled.

I would recommend this method as an alternative to digging the entire shaft large enough to accomodate the paint-buck for a number of reasons.

1) I'm assuming you plan to detonate more than 10cm * 10cm * 10cm (1 L - ~0.8kg) worth of AN. if this is so, then confinement inside the bucket is not too important as this is the critical diameter of AN. This means that the difference between plastic-bucket confinement and dirt confinement will be small to negligable and certainly not worth the effort of digging a huge-assed hole.

2) Given how far away from civilization you're going to need to be, there's really no danger in letting off a 'small pop' before the main event. If this first det is enough to alert anybody to your activities then you can bet your ass that the encore will positively have them soiling their strides :D

3) Two bangs has gotta be better than 1 eh? ;)

Can't find the blasting manuals at the moment, the disc's grown legs and pissed off on me, but if extra clarification is needed think of an upside down mushroom shaped cavity.

[EDIT: The process descibed is known as 'springing a hole' and should be done at least 1/2 hour before re-filling it. This is to allow any heat to dissipate and for burning embers to be noticed and extinguished. The process is described on pg 146 of the Blasters Training Manual

This file may be found here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/18521837/Blasters_Training_Manual...
]

[Edited on 25-6-2006 by enhzflep]

zmk - 2-7-2006 at 17:48

For someone who does know.
Ammonium nitrate: 35.0.0.0 depend what packet and what industry ,factory who manufacture.
And also same working very good with 34.0.0.0
AN: 92% powder
Fuel oil: 8%
C : 2% powder
H2SO4.... 99%: for 1kg need 11ml to 15ml depend what fuel you will use. I use 11ml for our EX.
Mix AN with Fuel oil and this ANFO must stay like that 1week
after that mix C very good and for end mix but with protected hands H2SO4 with that ANFO.the point with acid is for make nitro fuel in that mixture.
And point with C to start with little detonator or little buster.
Detonation velocita: 6000m/s with 1.8gr/cm3
Buster: sometime need 30gr buster ,sometime no need depend from the fuel what u will use and how much % u will mix with the AN.
For our EX need boster: 20gr AP with 10gr AN and 0.2ml fuel oil mixing together all. Don't put in to much fuel oil in AN and AP because u will clouse all oxigen from AN and AP can't take oxigen from AN.
If someone have questions I am here.

[Edited on 03-07-2006 by zmk]

zmk - 2-7-2006 at 18:17

AN: 88% powder
Fuel Oil : 7%
NaNO3 or KNO3 : 5% powder
C : 1% powder

Mix AN with Fuel oil and NaNO3 or KNO3 and wait 1 week ,after that mix C

Detonation velocita: 5500-6000m/s 1.7-1.8gr/cm3

Very stable EX and very good.
Boster yes need: 40gr AP mix with 20gr AN and 1ml Fuel oil.

st0ne - 5-7-2006 at 04:57

zmk, I advise you against putting fuel oil in you booster charges. There is no need of it. AP has very negative OB, so your booster doesn't need fuel - it needs of more oxidizer. A mixture of 88% AN and 12% AP has perfect OB but low brisance. Try APAN in ratio 1:1 or 1:2.

Fulmen - 6-7-2006 at 00:02

Can someone please kick this moron the h*ll off the forum? Please?

enhzflep - 7-7-2006 at 00:57

Surely we can post some usefull links for him.... ;)

ZMK, here's a couple of links you may find usefull:

---> Calculate This

---> Don't forget the K factor

Just in case the last 2 links were not written well so as to express the crux of the matter,
---> Additional Info

zmk - 7-7-2006 at 05:00

I delete all because maybe is not right place here for talk
about AP and other EX its ok.
Who tell u that links or u have use before....?
If u dont like to know for that u can tell me and i will delete .

Zinc - 7-7-2006 at 11:10

Quote:
Originally posted by enhzflep
You think the crater in the field is decent? Wait till you see the video ;)



I think that the crater in the field is decent and please post the video of the explosion if you have it.

enhzflep - 7-7-2006 at 16:34

Sorry Zinc, I'm afraid to say that to my knowledge, there never was a video of the blast in the field. It was some 20 years ago IIRC and the shots are actually scans of 'real' photos. I just meant the blast on the beach. That crater has 3 or 4 people inside the crater on the floor - not even piled up around the rim.. Judging by the stills of the field, the video wouldn't come close to that of the beach blast. The only bummer is that the guy's video capture card wasn't working properly at the time, hence no sound. :( :(


Zmk, Say what, Hey what, Huh???? Nothing wrong with the discussion of AP here. People do it all the time. Google told me the location of those links after I typed in Internet Troll and then Kewl. I've not read those entries before, but considered them somewhat pertinent to the dialog being conducted.
Quote:
If u dont like to know for that u can tell me and i will delete .
WTF???? - Man, your grammar isn't even terrible.:P What's with this fixation for deleting everything. You shouldn't go back and delete it later - just don't fuck it up at the time.. You know? Consider your posts as permanent, but to a degree, changeable.
The only thing I can guess from the line I quoted you on is "If you don't want the information I posted, tell me and I will delete it" Is this what you meant?

Discussion is (almost)always welcome and is even more valuble when being conducted with somebody that has experience, but mate, you need to be clear and concise. It also helps if you don't set off everybody's "Bullshit Detectors" 'Cos when you do this with a post that hardly makes sense people become very tired, very quickly.

On the other hand, I've had no chance to test as yet - nor research to check the validity of your claims. However, the emulsion idea with oil, detergent and H2O2 sounds interesting.
Thank-you. Perhaps you should use a different web-based chinese->english translator (if you even need one) OR you could try running your posts through Word first to have some basic grammar checking done.

zmk - 7-7-2006 at 21:06

Yes man u are right and my English is bad.
That emulsion is great and work like rocket fuel when have temperature 60- 80C .
If u mix 1:1 u will have EX and that mixture can explode when is with temperature 80C
The oil for eat is very good for emulsion because inside in that oil have little % water but still need little liquid detergent for very very good emulsion.
I didn't make very good test with the emulsion and AN i know only for 92% AN and 8% emulsion and work very good but i think still need more % emulsion



[Edited on 03-07-2006 by zmk]

zmk - 8-7-2006 at 20:51

AN: 6gr
Coffe : 2gr
AL: 2gr

Powerful mixture ,
The power= 1.4 TNT

Other EX very good.......

AN:80%
AL:15%
C:5%