Abstract
Ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil (ANFO) is commonly used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The development of ANFO vapour sensors that are small, inexpensive, and easy to use will enable widespread IED detection in the context of security and humanitarian demining. Because of concealment and the low vapour pressures of most explosive materials, achieving sufficiently high sensitivity and low limits of detection are some of the main challenges of explosives vapour detection. Here ANFO chemiresistive vapour sensors based on polypyrrole (PPy) percolation networks are presented and compared to gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) results for ANFO. Improved sensitivities are achieved by using a polymer percolation network instead of a thin film for the gas sensors. Vapour concentrations are detected of 13-180 ppb of ammonia emitted by a variety of different ammonium nitrate-containing fertilisers and fertiliser-diesel mixtures.
Highlights
The detection of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) plays an important role in both security and humanitarian applications
Vapour sensing of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil (ANFO) is especially challenging because the fertilisers commonly used as the ammonium nitrate (AN) component are not volatile, their decomposition products are,[2,3] whereas fuel oils such as diesel are omnipresent and can cause a high false positive rate
1 g fertiliser was placed in the t-shaped sample holder and N2 was used to carry any vapours emitted by the fertiliser into the sensor testing chamber
Summary
The detection of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) plays an important role in both security and humanitarian applications. In developing countries where unexploded devices remain concealed due to past or current conflicts, cheap and reliable humanitarian demining remains a challenge. Other traditional methods used in humanitarian demining, such as the use of metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, and acoustic sensors are not always effective because of the large range of materials, shapes, and sizes of the containers used for IEDs, and the frequent absence of metal components.[4] Vapour sensing methods based on for example mass spectroscopy,[5] ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy,[6] and nuclear quadrupole resonance,[7] often require relatively large pieces of equipment and are not practical for use in the field. One recent example uses small scale fluorescence based detectors for ANFO and ammonium nitrate/nitro methane (ANNM) detection.[16]
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