The Christian Science Monitor Texas fertilizer plant: Why was the blast so enormous? Ammonium nitrate may be the more likely candidate in the explosion. In small quantities, the white pellets won’t detonate, notes Ronald Willey, a chemical engineering professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Many drugstore cold packs use the compound because, when water is also put in the packs, the mixture absorbs heat from its surroundings. But the compound begins […]