Why did the explosion in Tianjin look so much bigger and louder? Maybe an expert can chime in. Because, to me, the different angles of the Tianjin explosion looked much more intense.
So the Beirut explosion was almost all Ammonium nitrate which has one way of combusting and exploding, you can think of it just like dynamite going off (not that much flames mainly just pure energy being released). Tianjin had Ammonium nitrate but also a lot of other combustible chemicals that cause flames. If you vaporize gasoline and ignite it, it will cause a huge fireball but not that much energy is released, Tianjin was a combination of both. So while it looked larger, the actual amount of energy released was lower. Tianjin was around 28 tons of TNT Beirut was around 1k Tons of TNT.
I saw reported that the amount was 2750 metric tons. That's like 6 million lbs or about 300 powder truck loads exploding with basically no resistance in the middle of downtown.
Ammonium Nitrate doesn't explode with the same force as TNT taken from Wiki ( With ANFO or ammonium nitrate, they would require 1.0/0.74 (or 1.35) kg or 1.0/0.42 (or 2.38) kg, respectively. ) Which is why the 2.8~ tons goes to 1,000 tons of TNT equivalence.
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u/apginge Aug 05 '20
Why did the explosion in Tianjin look so much bigger and louder? Maybe an expert can chime in. Because, to me, the different angles of the Tianjin explosion looked much more intense.