posted October 25, 1999 04:52 PM            

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It isn't made useless by air or water. The air containes moisture which makes the ammonium nitrate damp over time, which does not help it as an explosive. You can dry it by cooking in an oven. In the lab we fill a beaker less than half way (best to have it spread out as much as possible), cover it with a watch glass (to keep contaminents from falling in), and heat at 150-300 °F for 1-3 hours. You can use a household oven the same way. Just spread the ammonium nitrate out on a glass pan (like for cakes) and set the oven on to 250 °F for 2-3 hours.

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posted October 26, 1999 06:58 PM         

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Mega didn't say it took 5 mins to make it ready to use, but rather 5 mins to figure out how to thwart the coating. Here's how to was it: (from mega's post)

Since ammonium nitrate is hygroscopic, it is coated with an inert material in prilled form. This material has the added bonus of making ammonium nitrate less explosive. Since the coating is only partially soluable in water, and ammonium nitrate is very soluable, it can be removed for the most part. It is best to crush up the ammonium nutrate prills as much as possible to break the shell and use cold water. It is fortunate that the water gets cold, the soluability of the bad coating increases with higher temperatures, wheras AN is very soluable even in the cold. Stir it well and skim/filter to remove the undissolved coating. Take the AN solution water and boil it down to a slush. Pour this out into a shallow pan or dish, it must be shallow to remove the most moisture quickly. Place this in an oven at a gentle heat, AN will decompose if it is too high, you don't need to boil the water, just drive it off. 100 to 150 °F will do.

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