Nitrogen fixation
Chemicals are everywhere. From the water we drink to the cells that make up our body, the fertilizers that are used for agriculture, the drivers of photosynthesis in plants – all these are based on chemicals. Understanding the behaviour of chemicals during a reaction is essential to predict the results of the reaction.
Let's take the example of fertilizers. Fertilizers are used in agriculture to increase crop yields. In the initial days, farmers were using natural manure such as animal faeces to improve crop production. It was in 1914 that the first synthetic fertilizers were used, and since then the industry has grown so much that, today, it accounts for 1.2% of global energy consumption.
Fertilizers are largely categorized across three nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. Nitrogen is the most important of all the nutrients. However, Nitrogen is fed to crops in the form of Ammonia (NH3). The process of converting atmospheric...
