In a continued study on the generation of toxic fumes by commercial explosives the infoluence of some variations in a nitroglycerine (NG) based semigel explosive formulation was investigated in a cylindrical laboratory fume study chamber with a capacity of 6 m~3. The influences of varying quantities of wax coated cartridge wrapper, the grain sizes of ammonium nitrate and the sampling time interval on the generation of oxides of nitrogen (NO_x) and carbon monoxide (CO) in the detonation products were studied by analyzing a large number of sample data. A graphical analysis of the resulting fume data led to interesting findings, indicating the possibility of designing NG-based semigel explosives with a better fume quality through the selection of coarser grains of AN rather than finer grains as ingredient and smaller quantities of waxed wrapping paper as cartridge. A further reduction of the total toxic fume level in the post blast atmosphere may be achieved with lapse of time.
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