Construction sector drives a country’s growth, serving as a foundation for residences, facilities, infrastructural development and employment opportunity. Quarry operations are accustomed to controlled demolition for extraction of limestone, granite, gravel and rocks for construction while mining operations are essential for extraction of minerals and metals. According to Department of Statistics Malaysia, in 2022, non-residential building and specialized construction activities contributed to the plunge of construction sector by 5.0%, followed by the Mining & Quarrying sector with growth of 2.6%, up from 0.9% in 2021.

To build access roads and extraction benches at mines or quarries, drilling and blasting are key activities performed on site. Ammonium Nitrate – Fuel Oil (ANFO) is a commercially accessible bulk explosive highly used as a blasting agent. However, the use of ANFO slowly depleted and was replaced by Ammonium Nitrate Emulsion (ANE) due to its superior water resistance and energy output.

Maintenance of heavy equipment generate waste streams, particularly waste oil (WO) - spent lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and contaminated oil. Waste oil treated as a Scheduled Waste that requires to be treated in accordance with the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulations 2005, P.U.A 294-2005, which are overseen by the Jabatan Alam Sekitar (Department of Environment) (DOE) and can only be disposed by a licensed Scheduled Waste Contractor, incurring a cost that is borne by the quarrying companies.

Diesel is a non-renewable material that is strongly tied to heavy machineries operations and blasting agents. In the Fire Triangle and the Explosion Pentagon, diesel fuel serves as the combustible material. To manufacture Ammonium Nitrate based products, diesel serves as the oil phase. Biessikirski et al. (2024) depicted that generally, Ammonium Nitrate:Fuel Oil are blended in 19:1 (95%:5%) ratio. ANE is a water-in-oil emulsion where droplets of AN solution are dispersed in the continuous hydrocarbon fuel phase. Diesel prices are volatile and fluctuate based on geopolitical factor (Veteska et al., 2025), inflation, crude acquisition cost and refining costs. Mines and quarry operations rely heavily on diesel for haulage trucks (Tokac et al., 2025). ANE manufacturing plants, apart from utilizing diesel as a raw material, diesel also powers lifting equipment such as forklift, process equipment such as compressor and hot water generator.

This research explores valorising waste oil as diesel substitute in the fuel phase in straight ANE—a formulation with higher AN concentration than doped ANE products and ANFO. This would serve as a potential cost reduction for mines and quarries as well as raw material for ANE production. This literature review will provide an insight for waste oil management and bulk explosive properties respectively and the effect of incorporating the separate entities to manufacture a bulk explosive component.