NPK Fertilisers and Their Production
Your plants need proper nutrition just like you do, and NPK fertilisers are like vitamin supplements for crops. NPK stands for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium - the three essential elements that help plants grow rapidly and stay healthy.
These fertilisers are formulations containing salts of N, P, and K in exactly the right percentages. Ammonium nitrate is a perfect example - it's made by using ammonia from the Haber process to produce nitric acid, which then reacts with more ammonia. It's like a chemical assembly line.
Potassium sources come from potassium chloride or potassium sulfate, which are simply mined from the ground with no further processing needed. For phosphorus, things get more interesting - phosphate rock reacts with nitric acid to make phosphoric acid, but plants can't use this directly, so it's neutralised with ammonia to create ammonium phosphate.
Key Point: Different combinations create different fertiliser products - phosphate rock with sulfuric acid makes single superphosphate, whilst phosphate rock with phosphoric acid creates triple superphosphate.