Study of non-conventional fuels for explosives mixes

The use of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) results in low cost blasting. Such costs may be further reduced by replacing fuel oil with alternative fuels such as biomass (biodiesel, rice straw, corn cob, sugar cane bagasse) and tires residue. This paper investigates the use of other fuels instead of fuel oil by measuring the detonation velocity (VOD) and verifying the importance of these fuels in an explosive mixture. Except for biodiesel, all the tests conducted for the mixture of ammonium nitrate and alternative fuels showed poor performance when compared with ANFO. The achieved percentage of detonation velocity (VOD) of the mixtures in relation to the ANFO were 55.4% for ammonium nitrate + rice straw, 64.9% for ammonium nitrate + corn cob, 70.1% for ammonium nitrate + sugar cane bagasse, 74.4% for ammonium nitrate + tires residue and 93.7% for ammonium nitrate + biodiesel. This study indicates that the methodology proposed can be applied as a reference for determination and preparation of explosive mixtures of fuel and oxidizing agents since in all the tests conducted the detonation of the charges occurred.