CAOG - PhD Student

Mr Ryan Brogden

Establishing the Origin of Explosives and Smokeless Powders by Isotope and Trace Element Analysis.

With terrorist activities on the rise, chemical techniques are being developed to source explosives, such as ammonium nitrate, and smokeless powders, commonly used in ammunition and pipe bombs, to their source of origin. Techniques such as bulk stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry prove very useful to source material to a known manufacturer or geographic region by showing differences in the isotope values of carbon (13C/12C), nitrogen (15N/14N), oxygen (18O/16O) and deuterium (D/H). To discriminate material further, a trace metal 'fingerprint' can be obtained using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) that measures the distribution of trace elements down to part per billion (ppb) levels. Material from different manufacturing processes should give a unique 'fingerprint' due to the uptake of metals during manufacture or from the raw materials. Ammonium nitrate has been sourced from the major manufacturers within Australia and smokeless powder has been sourced from manufacturers worldwide for this study.

Supervisors

A/Professor K. Grice, Professor J. Watling (UWA), Dr P. Greenwood (UWA).

Funding

Centre for Forensic Science, UWA and Curtin University of Technology

Contact

Brogdr01@stdent.uwa.edu.au