Fertilizer
Ammonium nitrate is an important fertilizer with the NPK rating 34-0-0 (34% nitrogen).[9] It is less concentrated than urea (46-0-0), giving ammonium nitrate a slight transportation disadvantage. Ammonium nitrate's advantage over urea is that it is more stable and does not rapidly lose nitrogen to the atmosphere.
Explosives
Ammonium nitrate is not an explosive in the form it is commonly sold.[10] However it readily forms explosive mixtures with varying properties when combined with primary explosives such as azides or with fuels such as aluminium powder or fuel oil.
Mixture with fuel oil
Main article: ANFO
ANFO is a mixture of 94% ammonium nitrate ("AN") and 6% fuel oil ("FO") widely used as a bulk industrial explosive.[11]:1 It is used in coal mining, quarrying, metal mining, and civil construction in undemanding applications where the advantages of ANFO's low cost and ease of use matter more than the benefits offered by conventional industrial explosives, such as water resistance, oxygen balance, high detonation velocity, and performance in small diameters.[11]:2