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Posted By: Mike Kremer Give this Man a Medal - 06/10/13 07:25 PM
His name is Kevin Fleming, and he has dicovered a simple
additive to stop the Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer IED bombs exploding and killing or maiming thousands of western troops

Ammonium Nitrate is an essential fertilizer that is used by
farmers to help grow better crops all over the world.
Unfortunately when it is mixed with Diesel Oil it becomes highly explosive and used to make IED bombs to kill our troops
in Afganistan and other Moslem countrys.

Kevin Fleming has been an organic gardener since he was eight. Working with five acres in Las Cruces with the problems of calcareous soils that are very similar to those in the Middle East, he knew that Nitrate fertilizers were used in commercial farming.
He knew from the chemistry of IED's that the ammonium ion is weakly attached to the nitrate ion. They hang onto each other, but the right chemical reaction can easily pull them apart. Fleming reasoned you could separate the ions by adding a compound they would rather cling to, called a metathesis reaction.
I was looking for something that could change Ammonium Nitrate into something else at the molecular level.
He tried many substances including iron sulphate
a readily available compound that steel foundries throw away by the tons. When mixed with ammonium nitrate, the iron ion “grabs” the nitrate and the ammonium ion takes the sulfate ion. Iron sulfate becomes iron nitrate and ammonium nitrate becomes ammonium sulfate.

“The iron looks at the ammonium nitrate and says, ‘Can I have your nitrate rather than my sulfate?’ and the ammonium nitrate says, ‘I like sulfate, so I’ll trade you.’” Ammonium sulfate and iron nitrate are not detonable, even when mixed with a fuel, as is ammonium nitrate. “It’s a different compound,” said Fleming, who completed work on the formula in late 2012. “At the chemical level it’s a great fertilizer but does not detonate.”

Thats about it...and Kevin Fleming has decided NOT to patent his idea, all the quicker to get it adopted all over the World.

I say give him a Medal.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-new-fertilizer-useless-in-bombs-050313
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