A Minnesota research center figures out how to make nitrogen fertilizer with wind.
The University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris, Minnesota, serves as an agriculture experiment station focusing on renewable energy. Michael Reese is the director of renewable energy at the Center. He says a focus on wind energy started roughly 12 year ago.
?If you take Minnesota, we import all of our nitrogen synthetic fertilizer. We don?t have any fossil fuel reserves like natural gas so we send $500 million to billion out of state to bring nitrogen fertilizer in,? Reese says.
The research seeks to reduce fossil energy consumption in production agriculture. Producing nitrogen fertilizer accounts for roughly 40 percent of the energy that goes into producing corn.
?The process involves taking wind energy and electrifying water with wind energy at the same time pulling nitrogen from the air. Air is 78% nitrogen so we have core constituents of anhydrous ammonia that are nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas.?
Reese adds they then use a conventional process to produce nitrogen fertilizer.
Through their research, they found that using wind energy to help produce nitrogen fertilizer provides an option to reduce the energy intake.
