A Critical View on Scope of Microbial Degradation of Slurry Explosives

The literature survey of aging behaviour of explosives revealed that most of the explosives decomposed at higher temperature. These work were done to improve the operational safety of these explosives. Hence these should be used, stored and handled at a suitable temperature and humidity. These explosives will expire much before the expiry date provided by the manufacturer, if not handled properly. The microbial method of decomposition has been used successfully for the Unimolecular explosives such as NG or its combination, TNT, PETN, RDX and HMX. This means that the microbes have a detrimental effect on all these explosives. Hence, such microbes can be utilized for further decomposing the already expired explosives. In India and many countries of the world, destruction of expired explosives are done by burning method, which is neither scientific nor environmental benign. The research on biodegradation of slurry explosives was not done extensively. It was necessary to develop suitable and alternative methods of destruction of slurry explosive using microbial means.