(195f) Sustainable Nitrogen By Design: Mechanochemically Synthesized Co-Crystal Materials for Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizer Products

Urea production costs can be attributed, among other things, to the energy cost of atmospheric nitrogen fixation, which is estimated to be from 1% to 2% of global energy consumption. The recent global events, including the global pandemic and Ukraine’s invasion by Russia, led to unprecedented market volatility and food supply chain disruptions which resulted in high fertilizer costs. Additionally, the useful yield of N from mineral N fertilizer factory-to-mouth is only ∼4% with only 47% of N taken up from the field to crops. We postulate that the overall N fertilizer production and use cycle, not only NH₃ synthesis needs to be evaluated to obtain a more sustainable nitrogen fertilizers but also novel materials have to be engineered that have higher stability in the environment.

In this talk we will focus on the mechanochemically synthesized urea cocrystal materials as both sustainable process and a product with the decreased strain on the environment. In particular, green mechanochemical methods avoid use of aqueous solutions and the resulting evaporation and crystallization processes while urea cocrystals with Ca- and Mg-salts exhibit decreased solubility and lower reactive nitrogen losses. Presentation will focus on the discovery and synthesis of urea cocrystals, their mechanochemical synthesis kinetics, scale up engineering as well as the resulting fundamental surface properties in the presence of water.