Sustainable production and in-place utilization of a liquid nitrogenous fertilizer

Summary

Efficient production and utilization of nitrogenous fertilizers can increase the food supply to support the dramatic increase of the world's population. However, the conventional centralized production and excessive use of solid nitrogenous fertilizers lead to severe waste and environmental pollution. The adoption of liquid nitrogenous fertilizers can maximize utilization efficiency. Because plants can simultaneously absorb ammonium- and nitrate-nitrogen fertilizers, herein we propose a two-step relay strategy to sustainably produce NH₄NO₃ solution for in-place utilization by using air and water as raw materials. This distributed synthesis approach can be easily incorporated into present irrigation systems with controllable fertilizer concentrations for different crops. Furthermore, a techno-economic analysis is conducted to confirm the application potential of this strategy. This perspective provides new insight for the sustainable production and in-place utilization of liquid nitrogenous fertilizers at appropriate concentrations and hopefully promotes the development of smart agriculture.