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Saturday, July 25, 2009

Fertilizer

The fertilizers are widely used in our daily life such as gardening and farming. Fertilizers are chemical compounds that use to accelerate the growth of plants and the crops.
Basically, the fertilizers are classified into 2 categories which are organic fertilizer (a.k.a “natural” fertilizer) and non-organic fertilizer (a.k.a mineral fertilizer). There are 2 applications of fertilizers onto the plants. The first one will be applying the fertilizers in the soil so that the plant can absorbs the fertilizers from the roots. However, the second one is by foliar feeding which is the absorption of fertilizers from the leaves.
The purpose we use fertilizer is to provide the proper nutrients to the plants. Sometimes, the content in the soil might not sufficient for the plant to grow properly. The major nutrients that are needed by a plant are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium which is also known as N-P-K. Besides, the plants also needed calcium, sulfur, magnesium, trace elements, boron, chlorine, iron, zinc, copper, molybdenum and selenium.

I wish to be more concern on Nitrogen fertilizer on my passage here.
The fertilizer is named as nitrogen fertilizer if the main element of the fertilizer is Nitrogen. Compounds of nitrogen are essential for plant growth, as nitrogen is needed for making proteins and so helps the development of healthy green leaves and strong stems. Nitrogen fertilizer is usually manufactured by the Haber process (Haber Bosch Process). During the Haber process, nitrogen and hydrogen are combined at the temperature of 350–500°C/660–930°F, with the pressure of 80–200 atmospheres, and the iron is used as a catalyst.

The equation for nitrogen in Haber process is:-
N2 + 3H2 = 2NH3

This process will also produced ammonia. However, Most of the ammonia is used to make fertilizers, such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate. Another major use of ammonia is to make nitric acid, which is also used to make fertilizers. Besides, ammonia is also used to combine with rock phosphate and potassium fertilizer to produce compound fertilizer in Odda Process.

Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for the field such as the growing of maize, barley, sorghum, rapeseed, soya bean and sunflower.

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