Blue Urea: Fertilizer With Reduced Environmental Impact
Blue Urea: Fertilizer With Reduced Environmental Impact
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DOI：
10.3389/fenrg.2019.00088
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发表时间：
2019-08-28
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Styring, Peter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Driver, Justin G.;Owen, Rhodri E.;Styring, Peter
尿素等合成氮肥是粮食生产的必需品，对于实现全球粮食安全至关重要。尿素的常规制造是在大规模的集中生产工厂中进行的，随后的造粒尿素产品被分配到使用点。尽管在合成过程中消耗了二氧化碳，但由于使用了化石原料，整个过程是碳正的，导致了大量的净排放。蓝色尿素可以使用衰减的反应条件和来自可再生能源电解的氢气来生产，以生产低碳替代品。本文展示了尿素和硝酸铵肥料的强化生产，从可持续的原料，即水，氮和二氧化碳。重要的是，该过程可以缩小规模，使设备可以容纳在部署在使用点的标准化ISO容器中，从而使生产异地化，消除成本以及与运输相关的排放。尿素和硝酸铵是在相当温和的条件下以半连续工艺合成的，以生产适合直接土壤施用的水性肥料，消除了与干燥和造粒相关的财务和能源成本。从这个过程中的肥料的组成被发现是免费的污染物，使它们成为理想的应用。在生长研究中，在受控条件下施用合成的尿素和硝酸铵，并发现其对商业肥料（Nitram）具有抑制作用。重要的是，这两种合成肥料都提高了生物量的增长、氮的吸收和叶片叶绿素（即使在贫瘠的土壤中），这强烈表明它们对提高作物产量和农业产量是有效的。Blue Urea概念被提议安装在ISO容器中并部署在农场中，为氮肥的需求点生产提供交钥匙解决方案。
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers such as urea are a necessity for food production, making them invaluable toward achieving global food security. Conventional manufacture of urea is conducted in centralized production plants at an enormous scale, with the subsequent prilled urea product distributed to the point-of-use. Despite consuming carbon dioxide in the synthesis, the overall process is carbon positive due to the use of fossil feedstocks, resulting in significant net emissions. Blue Urea could be produced using attenuated reaction conditions and hydrogen derived from renewable-powered electrolysis to produce a reduced-carbon alternative. This paper demonstrates the intensified production of urea and ammonium nitrate fertilizers from sustainable feedstocks, namely water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Critically, the process can be scaled-down such that equipment can be housed in a standardized ISO container deployed at the point-of-use, delocalizing production and eliminating costs, and emissions associated with transportation. The urea and ammonium nitrate were synthesized in a semi-continuous process under considerably milder conditions to produce aqueous fertilizers suitable for direct soil application, eliminating the financial and energetic costs associated with drying and prilling. The composition of the fertilizers from this process were found to be free from contaminants, making them ideal for application. In growth studies, the synthesized urea and ammonium nitrate were applied under controlled conditions and found to perform comparably to a commercial fertilizer (Nitram). Crucially, both the synthesized fertilizers enhanced biomass growth, nitrogen uptake and leaf chlorophylls (even in depleted soils), strongly suggesting they would be effective toward improving crop yields and agricultural output. The Blue Urea concept is proposed for installation in ISO containers and deployment on farms, offering a turnkey solution for point-of-need production of nitrogen fertilizers.