how much energy does binary explosive have?

Answer 1

The energy of an explosive has nothing to do with it being binary or not. The difference between something that will explode and something that will burn is speed. A tank of gas in a car has way more energy than a stick of dynamite or a hand-grenade, it will just burn more slowly. Much more slowly.

In order to speed up the burning of something, that is to make it an explosive, you typically combine a strong fuel with a strong oxidizer. In most explosives this is done on a molecular level. For example the nitro group in trinitrotoluene have oxygens, and so the delivery of oxygens to the rest of the molecule is faster, the CO2 is created faster, so it explodes instead of burns.

In a binary explosive, primarily for safety reasons and nothing else, the two parts are kept apart. For example, in the most common binary explosive, ANFO (see link below), the oxidizer (ammonium nitrate) is kept separate from the fuel (often, literally, just fuel, i.e. gasoline). Apart neither is explosive. Together, they are. So you can store them very safely, and mix them right before you have to use them. In terms of energy, as the link below says, per weight it's only about 80% of the energy of TNT. But it's much safer than even TNT, which is already a safe explosive (relatively) to begin with.

In summary: binary explosive has to do with safety of storage, not with energy. And safety (i.e. no deaths, no missing fingers, no worker's compensation, no wrongful death lawsuits) trumps all other considerations when you have a brain and work with explosives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO