Fertilizers are food for plants: they provide nutrients for plants to grow and thrive. A mineral plant nutrient is an element which is essential or beneficial for plant growth and development or for the quality attributes of the harvested product of a given plant species grown in its natural or cultivated environment. In addition to carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which they get from the atmosphere and water, plants need 14 essential nutrients for their growth and health, which fertilizers provide of which the main nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphates (P) and potassium (K). Fertilizers are used across the globe to support sustainable agricultural production, and it is estimated that half the food we eat is produced thanks to mineral fertilizers.
Nitrogen Fertilizers are the number one nutrient the crop needs to grow. Contrary to Phosphates and Potassium, Nitrogen cannot be mined on a large scale anymore. The main production methods to produce nitrogen fertilizers is by converting nitrogen gas from the air into ammonia. Ammonia acts as the starting material for most nitrogen fertilizers like urea and various kind of nitrates.
Currently most ammonia is produced from Air and Natural Gas in large scale ammonia plants producing ammonia and carbon dioxide. These two products fit perfectly to produce urea, a safe solid nitrogen fertilizer with a very high nitrogen nutrient content. Ammonia can be converted with air to nitric acid, which can react again with ammonia to ammonium-nitrate, another solid nitrogen fertilizer with a relatively high nutrient content but ammonium-nitrate can also self-decompose and requires more safety measures during storage and transportation. When one mixes urea with ammonium-nitrate a liquid nitrogen fertilizer will form: urea-ammonium-nitrate (UAN), which is popular in Europe and Northern America.
Ammonia is also attractive to store and transport hydrogen and one can see more and more pro-jects developing Green and Blue Ammonia. Blue Ammonia is Ammonia produced from air and nat-ural; gas as described above but the carbon dioxide is stored for a long period by Carbon Capture Utilization or Storage (CCUS) technologies. Green Ammonia is produced from air and the electroly-sis of water, which is powered by renewable sources.
Green and Blue Ammonia will find mostly its applications as energy storage, carbon free fuel and as feedstock for premium nitrogen fertilizers.
What is Ammonia ?
Ammonia’s main use is a feedstock for a wide range of fertilizers like urea. Nitrates, phosphates and NPK’s. Other applications are feedstock for nylon, many pharmaceutical products and is used in many commercial cleaning products. Ammonia is used in all regions of the world and is widely traded in international markets due to its relatively cheap transport costs. A future interesting ap-plication is the use of ammonia as storage medium for hydrogen and the use as a carbon free fuel.
What is Urea?
Urea’s main use is as a nitrogen fertilizer. Other applications are as a cattle-feed supplement, in the manufacture of resins, glues, melamine, solvents, some medicinals, and in reducing NOx emissions by catalytic reduction. Urea is used in all regions of the world and is widely traded in international markets due to its relatively cheap transport costs. There is a continuous growth in global urea demand (and thus in production) due to among others the continuous growth of number of people worldwide and the increasing consumption of meat.