> For use in industry, urea is produced from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide. As large quantities of carbon dioxide are produced during the ammonia manufacturing process as a byproduct of burning hydrocarbons to generate heat (predominantly natural gas, and less often petroleum derivatives or coal), urea production plants are almost always located adjacent to the site where the ammonia is manufactured.
To be clear, the CO2 is captured from the fuel burned in producing the ammonia?
No, capturing CO2 from combustion is hard. Ammonia plants might burn methane for heat, but they don't capture its output.
The actual Haber–Bosch process for reaction directly spits methane into Hydrogen (which is combined with Nitrogen from the air) leaving CO2 as a byproduct.
The resulting CO2 is relatively pure, and it's already captured. You can feed it into anther process (such as Urea) or sell it for carbonisation of drinks.
> The resulting CO2 is relatively pure, and it's already captured. You can feed it into anther process (such as Urea) or sell it for carbonisation of drinks.
Makes for a pretty good refrigerant as well (R-744):
If possible that would seem ideal, however we don't exactly have tons of excess fossil fuel free methane just sitting around waiting to be used, atleast compared to the absolutely massive amount of fertilizer we need to produce to feed farmland. And if you are eliminating the fossil fuel from production, you might as well eliminate the methane component too and produce hydrogen on-site from water.
The main problem is just the energy cost because ammonia and urea both contain an ass ton of energy, 90% of which is coming from the the fossil fuel sourced methane. 1% of total world electrical production already goes into fertilizer production, and eliminating the fossil fuel component increases energy requirements near 10x over.
I had understood that e.g. landfill methane capture was this promising new (and cheap) idea that people just aren't executing because of a lack of political will. Is it not so straightforward?
To be clear, the CO2 is captured from the fuel burned in producing the ammonia?
... how much of it?