Fertilizer - History

History

Management of soil fertility has been the pre-occupation of farmers for thousands of years. The start of the modern science of plant nutrition dates to the 19th century and the work of Justus von Liebig, among others.

The Birkeland–Eyde process was one of the competing industrial processes in the beginning of nitrogen based fertilizer production. It was developed by Norwegian industrialist and scientist Kristian Birkeland along with his business partner Sam Eyde in 1903, based on a method used by Henry Cavendish in 1784. This process was used to fix atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) into nitric acid (HNO₃), one of several chemical processes generally referred to as nitrogen fixation. The resultant nitric acid was then used as a source of nitrate (NO₃-) in the reaction

HNO₃ → H+ + NO₃-

which may take place in the presence of water or another proton acceptor. Nitrate is an ion which plants can absorb.

A factory based on the process was built in Rjukan and Notodden in Norway, combined with the building of large hydroelectric power facilities.

The Birkeland-Eyde process is relatively inefficient in terms of energy consumption. Therefore, in the 1910s and 1920s, it was gradually replaced in Norway by a combination of the Haber process and the Ostwald process. The Haber process produces ammonia (NH₃) from methane (CH₄) gas and molecular nitrogen (N₂). The ammonia from the Haber process is then converted into nitric acid (HNO₃) in the Ostwald process.