195

10
Current Status and Concluding Remarks
There is no doubt that in the last decade or so, ammonium nitrate (AN)-based
explosives especially water gels/emulsions have established themselves as mainstay
in the eld of civil applications where explosives are needed and used.
This status has been achieved mainly due to the simple raw materials required
and the ease of production in large quantities in a safe manner. The explosives
manufacturing and sale itself have undergone a remarkable change. Whether this
change has been brought about by the availability of AN-based explosive or vice
versa, it is a matter of academic interest. In practice the changes which are most
noticeable are as follows:
1)

Shifting of manufacture from a very large production unit in a single location

to smaller facilities closer to the point of use. For example, as late as 1974 India
had only three manufacturing factories producing explosives but in a matter of
20 years 30 more production plants have come into existence located all over
the country. A similar situation has also taken place in China and even in the
USA.
2) The importance of long shelf life (12 years) insisted upon in the earlier times
has given away to very short period of 46 months. This has happened due to
the change in the distribution system with the advent of bulk delivery systems
and also very fast movement of packaged explosives. Customers carry very little
inventory and the explosive is delivered just in time or made on the site itself.
This has reduced the costs involved in storage and also enhanced the safety
by reducing handling and pilferage. Further due to the wide geographical
distribution of manufacturing plants, the explosives can reach an end user
within 45 days and used up immediately thereafter. This ensures that the
explosives age when used is well within its stipulated shelf life and the
explosives performance is optimal. A shelf life of maximum 6 months seems
to be adequate for most situations and accordingly the formulation and process
can be tailored. It is only in case of export involving longer transit time due to
shipping and storage at various stages that the explosive needs to have a longer
shelf life of 1 year. This is somewhat of a paradox in that while R&D was all
along busy in discovering formulations and processes to enhance the shelf life
of the product (AN explosives) to be the same as nitroglycerine (NG) explosives,
Ammonium Nitrate Explosives for Civil Applications: Slurries, Emulsions and Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oils,
First Edition. E.G. Mahadevan.
2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Published 2013 by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

196

10 Current Status and Concluding Remarks

the changed manufacturing and distribution systems allowed a much shorter

shelf life for the product.
3) Change from the critical status given to explosives in the earlier days during
blasting to a commodity status now where the explosive is treated only as
an input in the chain of operation. Proliferation of explosives manufacturing
units, some dedicated to a particular end user, has resulted in this situation.
While the end user is benetting from an assured and economical supply of
the explosive for all times to come, there is a denite possibility that the full
potential of the explosives which can be made available is not exploited.
4) Improvements in output from blasting activities of all types through implementation and execution of scientically developed blast designs have reduced
the dependence only on the energy-based performance of the explosive.
The question now is what direction the explosive industry needs to take in order
to progress (survival is not the issue) and attain a preeminent position with the end
user which status it was rightfully occupying in the early years. In particular, the
areas of R&D have to be chosen carefully to attain this objective.
The explosive industry will need to concentrate on special applications and unique
mining situations rather than routine blasting. With the growing population and
habitation, the proximity of these to the mining operations will give rise to
environmental problems which will need to be solved by special techniques using
tailor-made explosives together with innovative blast designs. Thus it is again the
close working together of the explosives chemist and the blasting engineer that will
lead to solutions which are effective and acceptable.
The industry for its own sake can look at further enhancing the safety margins
in all its operations. The safety statistics collected over the last decade on accidents
involving the AN-based explosives production and movement is not particularly
satisfactory and not commensurate with the safety margin expected from their
fundamentally insensitive properties.
The scarcity of land surface eventually will lead to underwater mining and
explosives will have to be developed specically for this application. Although
explosives are available for underwater applications such as deepening of harbors
and channels, deep mining explosives for use in depths of more than 30 m
underwater have still to be designed and tested. This may call for a totally new
design concept from the existing products.
As regards underground mining especially in coal, explosives use and consumption will come down as mining practices will employ long wall methods using
machines for coal cutting and dislodging coal without the hazards of continuous
blasting using explosives. Even in opencast mines where strata is loose and soft like
lignite, machine excavators are in use since long and their usage would increase.
The major reason why these machines are not used more is because of the huge
capital outlay required for such machines, the payback being risky due to the cost
of mining, and uctuating ore prices.
Therefore while the situation for the explosive industry is stable, any spurt in
growth can come only from a revolutionary product discovery or opening up of new

10 Current Status and Concluding Remarks

areas for use of AN-based explosives in large volumes such as military ordnance.
Specialized applications such as metal cladding, metal forming, and seismic
prospecting while technically challenging consume very much less quantities of
explosive as compared to conventional mining and excavation activities. Already
a decade has passed since the emulsion explosives came into regular commercial
use; hence time is ripe for another breakthrough in the eld of explosives for
a new and revolutionary product. Perhaps microemulsions and nanotechnology
could be the areas to spawn such a new product. Even if such an event happens,
it is more likely to be of a technical novelty rather than a commercially endorsed
breakthrough.

197