A study carried out by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and Stanford University has reached the conclusion that a revolution in the production of nitrogen fertilizers is possible. This would be of huge benefit as, at present, production requires large quantities of natural gas or coal, further details of which can be found in a press release issued by ETH.
The study identifies countries including India, Brazil, China, France, Turkey and Germany as being particularly vulnerable to price shocks on the natural gas and nitrogen markets. “There’s no getting around the fact that we need to make agricultural demand for nitrogen more sustainable in the future, both for meeting climate targets and for food security reasons”, explains Paolo Gabrielli, Senior Scientist at the Laboratory of Reliability and Risk Engineering at ETH Zurich, in the press release.
One option would be not to emit the CO2 generated during the production of the required hydrogen into the atmosphere, but rather to store it underground as part of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) approach. However, this comparatively efficient production method does not change the dependency on fossil fuels.
If hydrogen is produced electrically, i.e. by means of electrolysis, it requires 25 times more energy than is the case with natural gas. As such, this approach is of particular interest in countries with an abundance of solar and wind energy.
The final alternative involves synthesizing the hydrogen for fertilizer production from biomass, which would require vast areas of arable land and huge quantities of water. In this way, this production method would “ironically” end up competing with food production. As the study authors point out, this therefore means that this option would only be logical if it used crop residues, for example.
According to the study, the key to success lies in combining these approaches depending on the country and available resources. In addition, problems such as over-fertilization and food waste must be addressed, which would subsequently reduce the demand for fertilizers.
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