Technology
Innovation driving agriculture towards sustainable practices
Atlas Agro makes competitive zero-carbon nitrogen fertilizer using only air, water and renewable energy to produce the nutrition that crops need.
First, we make hydrogen through water electrolysis, using energy from renewable sources. Then, we split off nitrogen from air in an Air Separation Unit and mix the nitrogen with the hydrogen to produce ammonia. The ammonia is converted into nitric acid and later into calcium ammonium nitrate, completing the core production cycle.
The individual technologies have been proven and available for decades, for example the ammonia plant using the Haber-Bosch process. However, green nitrogen fertilizer has been limited by high energy costs and suboptimal performance when combining the different processes together. Atlas Agro has developed IP surrounding the combination of the technologies adapted to using renewable energy instead of poluting and outdated fossil fuels. The resulting nitrogen fertilizer is carbon-neutral, effective for farming, and – at scale – can compete with fossil production costs.
There are many ways of producing hydrogen. Green hydrogen made through the electrolysis of water using renewable energy completely removes the carbon emissions in the fertilizer making process.
Other forms of hydrogen production use coal or gas as feedstock, including blue hydrogen that first causes and later captures part of the carbon emissions. While blue hydrogen can be a more sustainable alternative to grey hydrogen, capturing parts of the emitted carbon dioxide to store underground, the current technology still allows for carbon emissions and does not address fugitive methane or the emissions in production and transportation of the fossil fuels used in the process.
