Synchrotron radiation study of nitrogen in chemical fertilizer used as explosive: Feasibility study

摘要

It is well-known that an explosive is defined as a material which contains a large amount of energy stored in chemicalbonds. The energetic stability of gaseous products, and hence, their generation comes from the strong bond formation ofcarbon (mono/di)oxide and (di)nitrogen. Consequently, most commercial explosives are contained –NO2, -ONO2, and/or–NHNO2 groups which, when detonate to release gases like the aforementioned ones, such as nitroglycerine, TNT,HMX, PETN, nitrocellulose, etc. It is revealed that the elemental compositions, especially nitrogen (N) is found mostlyin the explosives and chemical fertilizers. It is also proved that chemical fertilizers can be used as the explosive material.In this work, the elemental composition and structure are analyzed using a scanning electron microscopy coupled with anenergy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and a proton-induced X-ray emission spectroscopy (PIXE). Thechemical fertilizer structures are also characterized using Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and X-ray photoelectronspectroscopy (XPS) based on synchrotron radiation. It was shown that N was showing a relatively high amount invarious samples. In addition, the elemental composition analysis revealed the presence of trace elements. Explosives andchemical fertilizers had differences in the specific elemental compositions. It can be concluded that these methods seemto be used as a fingerprint examination to identify various kinds of the explosives and chemical fertilizers.