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| Grain slides, most of the time. Damp fertilizer cakes and stick and doesn't slide. I'd expect to see lower corrugations to begin to be squashed, and the abrasion of the fertilizer to clean off galvanize on the insides of them. Even with the cone bottom, I'd expect there to be considerable fertilizer hung up on the walls and how do you stand in a cone bottomed bin with fertilizer above your head and shovel it out?
Unless it was wax coated prills of ammonium nitrate. Long about 1921, part of a north German town was wiped off the map by uncoated ammonium nitrate. Apparently (its hygroscopic so it draws moisture and likes to cake) someone decided a bit of dynamite would loosed up a hopper car. It did, though the pieces of the hopper car probably were spread over a few square miles, along with the stocked fertilizer and the town. Reports are than 42-0-0 is hard to set off, but dynamite is reliable at it. Sledge hammer blows are probably not reliable ignition sources. And while fuel is often added and gives a bigger bang, ammonium nitrate gives a good bang without any. Yet it can burn in a fire without exploding.
Gerald J.
Edited by Gerald J. 1/2/2009 11:40
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fertilizer in normal grain bin
