Liquid oxygen explosives

✍ Scribed by George S. Rice

• Book ID: 104123156
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1920
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 48 KB
• Volume: 190
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(20)92144-0

✦ Synopsis

THE scarcity 04 glycerine and ammonia during the war so affected the production and cost of dynamite and black blasting powder that the Bureau o.f Mines initiated experiments, in the manufacture and methods of use of liquid-oxygen explosive, at its explosives' testing station at Pittsburgh, in March, 1917 . After the armistice, while in Europe as member of the Commission for studying methods for rehabilitation of French and Belgian mines and works, I observed the progress made abroad with liquid-oxygen explosive. Germany was found to have used it extensively in non-gaseous coal mines, in quarries, tunnels, and for destroying French steel plants. The allied countries, being still able to import Chilean nitrates, had not used the explosive.

The Bureau of Mines obtained promising results, in the preliminary experiment's, and is continuing this. work ' in the hope of making the use o,f liquid-oxygen explosive practical and economical in mines and quarries. As eminent physicists are promising improvements in liquifying apparatus that can be used for production of cheap oxygen, the explosive may become so cheap as to displace other explosives where conditions permit its. use. Details.