Ammonium Nitrate Incidents: Lessons for Learning from Beirut and Other Disasters

In Ammonium Nitrate Incidents: Lessons for Learning from Beirut and Other Disasters, you'll learn ...

• Case histories from several past Ammonium Nitrate Explosions in Oppau, Germany, Texas City, Texas, Port of Tiajin, China, and more recently, Beirut, Lebanon
• Factors contributing to these adverse events, resulting collectively in nearly 2,200 fatalities and destruction of property with costs in the billions
• Whether modern process safety and personal safety techniques would have made a difference
• What trends are common among ammonium nitrate incidents in the last century

Overview

Preview a portion of this course before purchasing it.

Credit: 3 PDH

Length: 50 pages

Ammonium Nitrate, when stored and handled properly, has life-giving benefits. It has been utilized for several decades as a nitrogen enriching fertilizer in agriculture around the world. This product is also the primary blasting agent for mining, roadway construction, quarries, and some military applications. Ammonium Nitrate is highly soluble in water and produces an endothermic reaction, which makes it useful for cold packs in the medical arena.

In the common world view, this product is harmless when used and stored properly. However, because of its availability, it is often stored in large quantities. Further, when mixed with other products, it can be detonated easily and produce a very destructive blast. In more recent years, it has been used as a weapon for terrorism. This life-giving product, when not stored and handled properly and given its misuses, has quickly become menace to some in the general public.

Since 1916, the devastating effects of improperly handling, storing, and transporting Ammonium Nitrate have been known. Many governments, post-incident, have instituted regulations on how it is stored, who can purchase it in large quantities, and its regulated uses. Some regulations, such as trace markers, do nothing to make it safer, but it does allow tracking capabilities for law enforcement. Still, we continue to have deadly incidents. Are we learning?

This course will review many of the incidents while grouping common lessons. It will review proper guides on storage, handling, and transportation, and provide opinions on why we have not learned from our past mistakes as a society.

Specific Knowledge or Skill Obtained

This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:

• Understand the causes for many of the case histories from past Ammonium Nitrate
• Explosions in Oppau, Germany, Texas City Texas, Port of Tiajin, China, and more recently, Beirut, Lebanon
• Factors that made these disasters worse, such as Facilities Siting
• How to apply available information and learnings to your planning, design and hazard reviews of engineering projects
• Factors contributing to these adverse events resulting in nearly 2,200 fatalities and destruction of property with costs in the billions
• What changes were made in the storage and handling of this product, and why they are not effective
• Whether modern process safety and personal safety techniques made any difference
• Common trends among ammonium nitrate incidents in the last century

Certificate of Completion

You will be able to immediately print a certificate of completion after passing a multiple-choice quiz consisting of 15 questions. PDH credits are not awarded until the course is completed and quiz is passed.