I do not believe ammonium nitrate is highly explosive...from my experience in using it in mining, it has to be mixed with diesel fuel and the explosive compound is ANFO, ammonium nitrate fuel oil which is highly explosive.
An acquaintance from Lebanon is in contact with his family who live in the Beirut area said the explosion was unbelievable.
He also said there is strong suspicion that the explosion was of missiles recently delivered from Iran to Hezbollah. He said his brother said he heard jet engine noise prior to the explosion.
I'm not ruling anything out. The second big white boom was one BIG explosion, rather than a series of blasts. Any theory of what it was has to be consistent with that. Rocket fuel? Perhaps. But if so, an awful lot of it.
1. Somebody was doing arc welding on one of the warehouse building doors.
2. The spark from the welding may have set off the rockets from Iran stored there by Hezbollah, which explains the fireworks like explosions we saw initially in the video.
3. As more and more rockets "cooked off," it caused a massive chain reaction series of explosions, and created the conditions to set off that 2,750 tons of improperly-stored ammonium nitrate all at once.
“...the explosion was of missiles recently delivered from Iran to Hezbollah.”
Would these missiles be Iranian-made, or purchased from Russia, China, North Korea? That would be interesting to know. Was one of them booby-trapped?
I do not believe ammonium nitrate is highly explosive...from my experience in using it in mining, it has to be mixed with diesel fuel and the explosive compound is ANFO, ammonium nitrate fuel oil which is highly explosive.
If confined and then heated to decomposition point will explode violently - especially if contaminated or mixed with combustible materials
Was explosion few years back in West Texas where warehouse filled with ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion
Actually, AN is very stable u to it is heated to some 400 friend it decomposes into volatile gases and when it reaches about 550f, it deflagrates or explodes if you will at about a factor of .95 equiv of tnt.
No detonator or fuel additive rquired, just a suspicious fire....
ANFO is more efficient since the decpompositon gases of AN are H N and O, all looking for a C....