Nitrogen

	What is N?			Role			Manufacturing
	Nitrogen comes from the air and is the primary building block for all life. The air we breathe is about 78 percent nitrogen, but there are very few plants that can make direct use of nitrogen in the air. To make this nitrogen available to support life, nitrogen from the atmosphere is converted into a form plants can easily use.			Often used in greater amounts than other nutrients, nitrogen helps make plants green and plays a major role in boosting crop yields. Nitrogen plays a critical role in protein formation and cell division, and is a key component of chlorophyll. Plants with adequate nitrogen show healthy vigorous growth, strong root development, dark green foliage, increased seed and fruit formation and higher yields.			Nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing captures naturally occurring nitrogen from the atmosphere, and combines it with hydrogen from natural gas under heat and pressure to form anhydrous ammonia. Ammonia is used in two ways: it is applied directly to crops as a nitrogen fertilizer and it is used as a building block to make other nitrogen fertilizer products, including urea, ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate and water-based liquid nitrogen fertilizers.

Common N Products

• Ammonia (82-0-0) – Used as an applied fertilizer or as a building block for other fertilizer products. Stored as a liquid under pressure or refrigerated, it becomes a gas when exposed to air and is injected into the soil.
• Urea (46-0-0) – A solid nitrogen product typically applied in granular form. It can be combined with ammonium nitrate and dissolved in water to make liquid nitrogen fertilizer known as urea ammonium nitrate or UAN solution.
• Ammonium nitrate (34-0-0) – Another solid nitrogen product typically applied in granular form is valued for its use on pasture lands and specialty crops such as citrus.
• Ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) – A solid product that is largely a byproduct of coke ovens, where sulfuric acid is used to remove ammonia evolved from the coal.
• Nitrogen solutions – Typically, a combination of urea and ammonia nitrate dissolved in water to form a highly soluble liquid fertilizer, typically containing 28 or 32 parts nitrogen.

Quick N Facts

• Since nitrogen is a component part of amino acids, it is at the heart of every protein molecule, comprising 16 percent of protein. Therefore, nitrogen fertilizer, in addition to increasing yields, also improves crop quality by increasing protein content. Crops such as corn, forage grasses, sorghum and the small grains are well known for this characteristic.
  
• Typically, North American corn crops annually remove more than 5.7 billion pounds of nitrogen from our soils. This nitrogen is replaced through the judicious application of fertilizer nutrients.
  
• Nitrogen is currently produced in 78 countries worldwide. The top five nitrogen producing countries for the last available year (2005) were China, India, the United States, Russia and Canada respectively.
  
• The United States relies on net nitrogen imports for more than half of new nitrogen supplies.

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