WINNIPEG, Manitoba. — US manufacturer Honeywell International
Inc said on Tuesday it has found a way to make a safer alternative to ammonium
nitrate, a fertilizer that has been used as a material to make bombs.
The company said it has fused ammonium nitrate with ammonium
sulfate to create a new dry nitrogen fertilizer that it hopes to gear to fruit,
vegetable and nut tree producers.
"Ammonium nitrate ... is a very good fertilizer. Obviously,
it has a lot of downsides because it’s a very good fuel source for explosives,
and there have been terrorist activities in the past," said Mark Murray,
director of strategic marketing for Honeywell’s resins and chemicals business,
in an interview.
Many fertilizer manufacturers and dealers stopped selling
ammonium nitrate after it was used to make the bomb that killed 168 people in an
Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. It has since been used in similar bombs
around the world.
The fertilizer accounted for 6 percent of global nitrogen
consumption in 2004-05, according to the International Fertilizer Association,
down from 9 percent a decade earlier.
"Ammonium nitrate, for all practical purposes, is going to
become extinct. It almost is there now," said Bryan Hopkins, a researcher at
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who tested the new fertilizer on crops
in Idaho.
Hopkins said the Honeywell product works as well as ammonium
nitrate and may be attractive for certain types of soils and crops, depending on
how it is priced.
Honeywell is the largest US producer of ammonium sulfate
fertilizer, a byproduct of a plastic material it manufactures for use in nylon.
When company researchers tested the new fused product in
explosions with fuel oil, they were "pleasantly surprised" to find it was inert,
said Jim Kweeder, principal research engineer on the project, in a telephone
interview.
The US government is currently developing new fertilizer
regulations, but Honeywell officials said they believe their new product will be
exempt from many of the new safety rules.
Honeywell said it is in discussions with fertilizer
manufacturers about licensing the technology.
The product holds promise for sandy soils, where other nitrogen fertilizers
can wash away quickly, causing both economic and environmental problems, said
Jack Rechcigl, director of University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and
Education Center, in an interview. – Reuters
