What is urea?
Urea is a nitrogen-containing chemical product that is produced on a scale of some 100,000,000 tons per year worldwide. For use in industry, urea is produced from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide. Urea can be produced as prills, granules, flakes, pellets, crystals, and solutions. More than 90% of the world production of urea is destined for use as a fertilizer. Urea has the highest nitrogen content of all solid nitrogenous fertilizers in common use (46.7%).
Urea, also called carbamide, is an organic chemical compound which essentially is the waste produced when the body metabolizes protein. It is a compound not only produced by humans but also by many other mammals, as well as amphibians and some fish. Urea was the first natural compound to be synthesized artificially using inorganic compounds— a scientific breakthrough. Urea was discovered in 1773 by the French chemist Hillaire Rouelle. In 1828, just 55 years after its discovery, it became the first organic compound to be synthetically formulated, this time by a German chemist named Friedrich Wöhler, one of the pioneers of organic chemistry. Synthetic urea is created from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide and can be produced as a liquid or a solid. The process of dehydrating ammonium carbamate under conditions of high heat and pressure to produce urea was first used in 1870 and is still in use today. Uses of synthetic urea are numerous and therefore production of it is high. In fact,
Urea is a nitrogen-containing chemical product that is produced on a scale of some 100,000,000 tons per year worldwide. For use in industry, urea is produced from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide. Urea can be produced as prills, granules, flakes, pellets, crystals, and solutions. More than 90% of the world production of urea is destined for use as a fertilizer. Urea has the highest nitrogen content of all solid nitrogenous fertilizers in common use (46.7%). http://en.wikipedia.
Non-synthetic urea is a byproduct of the liver in humans and other mammals (another type of uric acid is produced by birds and reptiles), and is generally excreted as urine. However, urea is high in nitrogen, one of the necessary elements for plant growth (and one of the major additives in plant fertilizer). Around the middle of the 19th century, scientists found a way to synthetically fabricate organic urea in large quantities, thus providing a way to increase food production for the world’s burgeoning population. By the end of the 20th century, it was in widespread use and production all over the world. Major producers of urea include the U.S., China, Russia and the Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and a number of other smaller countries. There are no accurate figures how much is produced worldwide, but it’s certainly in excess of 100 million tons. Cost of production is between $500 and $5,000 per ton, and I could find no accurate figures on average selling prices.
