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Nitrogen
Fertilizer

January 6

2016

In this project we will talk about the nitrogen fertilizers
...
fertilizer, types of
nitrogen fertilizer a small article about it etc…

Nitrogen Fertilizer

Page |1

Nitrogen fertilizer is a compound that is added to plants or lawns to
stimulate growth
...
Plants that do not
have enough nitrogen will turn yellow and eventually perish from a lack
of food
...
Haber discovered a way to fixate nitrogen from the
air
...
In this case, Haber was able to convert
gaseous hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia
...

Originally, Haber's process was used to synthesize nitrates for Germany
during the First World War, to aid in the production of explosives
...
Once this process was adapted to work on a
large scale, nitrogen fertilizer was born
...
The
first is natural nitrogen, which is found in decaying plant or animal
matter
...

The second form of nitrogen fertilizer available is commercially
synthesized
...
Ammonium-based fertilizers bond securely with
soil, but release their nitrogen slowly into a plant
...

Natural nitrogen takes longer to be used by a plant than either
commercial form, but does not come with the same risks
...
The widespread use of commercial nitrogen fertilizer is
now a serious environmental concern as contaminated runoff water
has begun to adversely affect sea plants around the world
...
This happens because, as water in the immediate area is
depleted of oxygen, the algae die
...

Nitrogen lawn fertilizer also contains phosphorous and potassium, since
phosphorus assists in root growth and potassium is needed for water
movement
...
One marked 10-10-10 means that each
compound accounts for 10% of the bag by weight, and the other 70% of
the bag is simply an inert chemical
...
Too much will kill a
lawn as surely as too little
...
Ideally, apply the material
when the lawn is wet and likely to stay that way for a while
...


How to Make Nitrogen Fertilizer

Page |3

Nitrogen is an essential component of plant growth and plays a vital
role in the development of healthy foliage
...


Steps

Page |4

1
...

Compost is nothing more than decomposed organic matter
...
Regarding nitrogen, the
bacteria in compost break matter down into ammonium, which is then
naturally converted by other bacteria into nitrates that plants can
absorb through their roots
...


Page |5

2
...


Coffee grounds can be mixed directly into the soil or added to a preestablished compost pile
...
Additionally, while
some worry about the acidic properties of coffee, it is the coffee
beans rather than the grounds that contain high levels of acid
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5 and 6
...

• You can add coffee grounds directly to the soil by mixing
damp grounds into the soil or by spreading the grounds over
the surface of the soil and covering them with organic mulch

Page |6

3
...


Sheep, beef cattle, and swine manure contain the largest
concentrations of nitrogen, with poultry and dairy cattle manure
following closely behind
...
Composted manure, or manure that has had the
chance to decompose, is better to use because bacteria has already
begun to break down the nitrogen into a form that plants can
absorb
...
Manure
tends to increase the salt content of soil, and using manure may
lead to an increased yield of weeds
...
Mix in a good dose of blood meal for a quick-release
fertilizer
...
This is a notably high percentage for
fertilizer components
...

•

•

Blood meal is an especially good source of nitrogen for heavy
feeders, like lettuce and corn, because of how fast-acting it is
...


Page |8

5
...

This fertilizer component is made of ground seeds from the cotton
plant
...
Unlike blood meal, however, cotton
seed meal breaks down slowly, distributing nitrogen to plants over an
extended length of time
...
It greatly acidifies soil, so if you plan to
make an organic fertilizer out of cotton seed meal, you should
also carefully monitor the pH of your soil
...
Use crab meal, feather meal, or leather meal for slowrelease fertilizers
...

These components all break down at a slow pace, however, and will not
provide adequate amounts of usable nitrates to plants in need of a
quick dose
...


P a g e | 10

7
...

Treated biosolids and wood materials Sawdust, wood chips, and
sewage sludge (which are pre-treated before using as fertilizer) all
contain nitrogen and can all be used in nitrogen fertilizers, just make
sure that the biosolid you will be using are treated and monitored
properly, if not, the associated risks of such products may not be worth
the potential benefit
...
While they
might not be the best choice for nitrogen fertilizers, biosolid fertilizers
add much needed nutrients
...


P a g e | 11

8
...

Certain plants, like legumes and clover, store nitrogen in nodules at
their roots
...

•

•

Just toss some legumes on the soil
...

To replenish Nitrogen on the soil
...
When resting
your plot on the 7th year, sow some mung beans
...
Do this, especially if you will be planting
heavy feeders like corn on the next growing year
...
[1] It is named after its inventors, the
German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed it in the
first half of the twentieth century
...
4 kJ•mol−1)
Before the development of the Haber
process, ammonia had been difficult to
produce on an industrial scale[2][3][4] with
Fritz Haber, 1918
early methods such as the Birkeland–Eyde process and Frank–Caro
process all being highly inefficient
...


History

P a g e | 13

Throughout the nineteenth century the demand for nitrates and
ammonia for use as fertilizers and industrial feedstock’s had been
steadily increasing; however, the main source remained the mining of
niter deposits
...
The most obvious source was atmospheric nitrogen
(N2), which makes up nearly 80% of the air; however N2 is
exceptionally stable and will not readily react with other chemicals
...


Haber together with his assistant Robert Le Rossignol developed the
high-pressure devices and catalysts used to demonstrate the Haber
process at laboratory scale
...
) per hour
...
He succeeded in this process in 1910
...


P a g e | 14

Ammonia was first manufactured using the Haber process on an
industrial scale in 1913 in BASF's Oppau plant in Germany, production
reaching 20 tons per day the following year
...
The Allies had access to large amounts of
sodium nitrate deposits in Chile (so called "Chile saltpetre") that
belonged almost totally to British industries
...


The Process

P a g e | 15

An historical (1921) high-pressure steel reactor for production of
ammonia via the Haber process is displayed at the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology, Germany
...
On each pass only about
15% conversion occurs, but any unreacted gases are recycled, and
eventually an overall conversion of 97% is achieved
...
5–3
...


Sources of hydrogen
The major source of hydrogen is methane from natural gas
...
Originally Bosch
obtained hydrogen by the electrolysis of water

Reaction rate and equilibrium
Nitrogen (N2) is very unreactive because the molecules are held
together by strong triple bonds
...


P a g e | 16

Two opposing considerations are relevant to this synthesis: the position
of the equilibrium and the rate of reaction
...
The obvious solution is to raise the
temperature, but because the reaction is exothermic, the equilibrium
constant (using atm units) becomes 1 around 150° or 200 °C
...
)
Kp(T) for N
2+3H
2 ⇌ 2 NH
3[12]
Temperature
Kp
(°C)
300

4
...
64 x 10−4

450

4
...
45 x 10−5

550

5
...
25 x 10−6

Above this temperature, the equilibrium quickly becomes quite unfavourable at atmospheric pressure,
according to the Van 't Hoff equation
...
However, the catalyst itself requires a temperature of at least 400 °C
to be efficient
...
[Citation needed]
Economically, though, pressure is an expensive commodity
...
In addition,
running pumps and compressors takes considerable energy
...
[Citation
needed]
Another way to increase the yield of the reaction would be to remove
the product (i
...
ammonia gas) from the system
...
The hot gases are cooled enough, whilst
maintaining a high pressure, for the ammonia to condense and be
removed as liquid
...
[Citation
needed]

Catalysts
The most popular catalysts are based on iron promoted with K2O, CaO,
SiO2, and Al2O3
...
Haber noted uranium was almost as effective as and easier
to obtain than osmium
...
Some ammonia production utilizes
ruthenium-based catalysts (the KAAP process)
...
Such catalysts
are prepared by decomposition of triruthenium dodecacarbonyl on
graphite
...


The pulverized iron metal is
burnt (oxidized) to give magnetite of a defined particle size
...
The resulting catalyst particles consist of a core
of magnetite, encased in a shell of wüstite (FeO), which in turn is
surrounded by an outer shell of iron metal
...
Other minor components of the catalyst include calcium and
aluminium oxides, which support the iron catalyst and help it, maintain
its surface area
...


P a g e | 19

The reaction mechanism, involving the heterogeneous catalyst, is
believed to involve the following steps: [13]
1
...


N2 (adsorbed) → 2 N (adsorbed)

3
...


H2 (adsorbed) → 2 H (adsorbed)

5
...


NH3 (adsorbed) → NH3 (g)

Reaction 5 occurs in three steps, forming NH, NH2, and then NH3
...
This is not unexpected since the bond broken, the
nitrogen triple bond, is the strongest of the bonds that must be broken
...


Advantages and disadvantages of
nitrogen fertilizers:

P a g e | 20

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of nitrogen fertilizers
...

• The use of nitrogen fertilizers helps to keep nutrient levels at
an optimum level, protect against disease and control weeds,
resulting in healthier crops and consistent quality and quantity
of yields
...

• High levels of nitrogen in the water can create algal blooms, large
growths of algae that imbalance the delicate ecosystem to the
detriment of other aquatic species
...


1
...
The nitrogen
contained in sodium nitrate is refined to 16%
...
When one makes a soil amendment
using sodium nitrates as a type of fertilizer in the garden, it is usually as
a top- and side-dressing
...
Sodium nitrate is quite useful as atype of fertilizer in
an acidic soil
...


2
...
It is easy to
handle and it stored well under dry conditions
...
Though this fertilizer type is
soluble in water, its nitrogen is not readily lost in drainage, because the
ammonium ion is retained by the soil particles
...
Over time, the long-continued use
of this type of fertilizer will increase soil acidity and thus lower the
yield
...


3
...
Ammonium
nitrate salts contain 33 to 35% nitrogen, of which half is nitrate
nitrogen and the other half is in the ammonium form
...
This fertilizer is quick-acting, but highly hygroscopic thus
making it unfit for storage
...


4
...
It is recognizable as a white crystal or as dirty-white
granules
...
e
...
5%) as nitrate nitrogen
...
Because this type of fertilizer keeps well, it is very
useful for all crops
...
Application of this fertilizer type can be done before sowing, at
sowing time or as a top-dressing, but it should not be applied along the
seed
...
Ammonium Chloride:
This fertilizer type comes in a white crystalline compound, which has a
good physical condition and 26% ammoniac nitrogen
...


6
...
It is a highly concentrated nitrogen fertilizer
and fairly hygroscopic
...
Urea is also produced in granular or pellet forms and
is coated with a non-hygroscopic inert material
...
It produces quick
results
...
Urea supplies nothing but nitrogen and the application of
urea as fertilizer can be done at sowing time or as a top-dressing, but
should not be allowed to come into contact with the seed
...
Ammonia:
This fertilizer type is a gas that is made up of about 80% of nitrogen and
comes in a liquid form as well because under the right conditions of
temperature and pressure, ammonia becomes liquid (anhydrous
ammonia)
...
Ammonia
is used as a fertilizer in both forms
...


8
...
These by-products can be anything from oil cakes,
to fish manure and even to dried blood
...
This conversion occurs through bacterial action which
is a slow process
...
This type of fertilizer may
contain small amounts of organic stimulants that contain other minor
elements that might also be needed by the plants that are being
fertilized
...
Oil-cakes
contain not only nitrogen but also some phosphoric and potash,
besides a large quantity of organic matter
...


9
...
Such things that are being investigated to make
fertilizers more environmentally friendly are improved methods of
application, supplying fertilizer in a form which is less susceptible to
runoff, and making more concentrated mixtures
...
It has been found that sewage

P a g e | 25

sludge contains many of the nutrients that are needed for a good
fertilizer
...
Efforts are underway to remove the unwanted elements,
making this material a viable fertilizer
...
The first fertilizers were manures; however, they
are not utilized on a large scale because their handling has proven to be
too expensive
...


A Brief History of Our Deadly Addiction
to Nitrogen Fertilizer

P a g e | 26

As investigators and rescuers move through a destroyed fertilizer
factory in West, Texas, it makes me think about just what nitrogen
fertilizer is, and why we use so much of it
...
Every
apple or ear of corn plucked represents nutrients pulled from soil, and
for land to remain productive, those nutrients must be replenished
...
But atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is joined together in an
extremely tight bond that makes it unusable by plants
...
Farmers of yore
might not have known the chemistry, but they knew that composting
crop waste, animal manure, and even human waste led to better
harvests
...
European elites
realized that feeding a growing urban population from a shrinking rural
labor base would be a problem—and that cheap and easy nitrate would
be part of the solution
...
In 1909, a German chemist named Fritz Haber
developed a high-temperature, energy-intensive process to synthesize
plant-available nitrate from air
...
Today's industrial-scale farms
would not be possible without it
...
As we just
tragically saw in Texas, the stuff can also make a massive explosion
...
In that way, the
industrialization
of
farming shares roots
with
the
industrialization
of
killing represented by
modern war
...

By the end of World War II, the United States had built 10 large-scale
nitrate factories to make bombs
...
The industry quickly shifted
from munitions to fertilizer and domestic consumption began to
skyrocket, driven, Smil writes, by the rise of new hybrid strains of corn,
"the first kind of high-yielding grain cultivar dependent on higher
fertilizer applications
...
And corn—which
according to the USDA "requires the most nitrogen per acre" of any
crop—remains at the center of our agriculture, covering 30 percent of
farmland each year
...
In a recent article, I laid them out:
Industrial agriculture's reliance on plentiful synthetic nitrogen brings
with it a whole bevy of environmental liabilities: excess nitrogen that
seeps into streams and eventually into the Mississippi River, feeding a
massive annual algae bloom that blots out sea life; emissions of nitrous
oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon; and the
destruction of organic matter in soil
...
"If Big Ag
becomes hooked on cheap fracked gas to meet its fertilizer needs," I
warned, "then the fossil fuel industry will have gained a powerful ally in
its effort to steamroll regulation and fight back opposition to fracking
projects
...
A 2012 Iowa
State University study found that by simply shifting to more diverse
crop rotations, Midwestern farmers could radically reduce their

P a g e | 29

reliance on added nitrogen while maintaining current levels of overall
food production
...

Yet instead of weaning us from our huge reliance on nitrogen, federal
and state agencies are underwriting the construction of new plants and
the expansion of old ones
...
3 million acres, covering an
area nearly the size of California
...


Nitrogen fertilizer component

P a g e | 30

• 1 Ammonia is one nitrogen fertilizer component that can be
synthesized from in-expensive raw materials
...
In this process, natural gas and steam are
pumped into a large vessel
...
This leaves
primarily nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide
...
Catalysts such as magnetite (Fe304) have been used to
improve the speed and efficiency of ammonia synthesis
...

•
2 While ammonia itself is sometimes used as a fertilizer, it is often
converted to other substances for ease of handling
...
In the presence of a
catalyst, a reaction occurs which converts the ammonia to nitric oxide
...

•
3 Nitric acid and ammonia are used to make ammonium nitrate
...
The two materials are mixed together in a
tank and a neutralization reaction occurs, producing ammonium
nitrate
...




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