Two new scientific studies published recently led to the same conclusion in regards to the quantity of ammonium nitrate that had exploded in Beirut Port on August 4th, 2020, and it is not as previously claimed.
Both studies, conducted by teams of scientists and researchers, contradict the previous statements and give rise to an important question.
The study that came to the controversial conclusion was conducted by a team of engineers and physicists, involving Charles J. Aouad, Wissam Chemissany, P. Mazzali, Yehya Temsah, and Ali Jahami.
It was recently published in Shocked Waves, a journal specialized in physics explosion and where new results related to shock and detonation phenomena are presented and discussed by experts.
As stated on its website, “the journal addresses physicists, engineers, and applied mathematicians working on theoretical, experimental, or numerical issues, including diagnostics and flow visualization.”
By studying the evolution of the Beirut Explosion fireball with amateur videos on social media, the team of this study could understand the energy with TNT equivalent and how much ammonium nitrate really exploded.
Their scientific paper presents a comprehensive study, through which they explain that if all the claimed 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate supposedly in the port exploded, it would have been an explosion equivalent to more than 1,000 tonnes of TNT.
Their study showed that the explosion was the equivalent of 200 tonnes of TNT, not 1,000+, which means the exploded quantity involved “only” 520 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and not 2,750 tonnes.
Another new study conducted by researchers from Beirut Arab University (BAU), involving Yehya Temsah, Ali Jahami, and Charles Aouad, analyzed the damage caused by the Blast on the building of the silo just next to it.
They came out with a similar conclusion: The amount of exploded ammonium nitrate was 520 tonnes.
The quantities of ammonium nitrate stocked in the port were supposedly 2,750 tonnes, but based on these new studies, only 520 tonnes exploded, so only a fraction of the original shipment.
961News talked to Charles Aouad, a Ph.D. researcher in astrophysics from the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and one of the physicists who conducted both these studies.
Dr. Aouad stated that there is “still one small probability that it [the remaining quantity] was here in the port, but didn’t detonate.”
It is to note that the FBI had issued a similar conclusion from its investigation. It indicated the Beirut Blast was caused by the explosion of 500 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
This then raises a question: What happened to the remaining 2,230 tonnes of the shipment that was unloaded and stocked in the port in 2013? If only one-fifth of the shipment exploded, where did the rest go?
