Honeywell Receives SAFETY Act Designation from DHS for New Fertilizer
23 de setembro de 2008 Morris Township, New Jersey, US-based Honeywell Resins & Chemicals – one of the world’s largest producers of ammonium sulfate fertilizer – has developed a patented new technology to produce a highly-effective, safer ammonium nitrate-based fertilizer with significantly lower explosive potential, according to a company press release.
The new technology fuses ammonium sulfate with ammonium nitrate, providing both nitrogen and sulfur needed for efficient plant nutrition as well as enhanced safety, quality, and storage characteristics. The new technology has already received SAFETY Act Designation from the Departamento de Segurança Interna dos EUA (DHS) under the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act, which was created to provide incentives, including liability protections, for the development and deployment of anti-terrorism technologies that can help mitigate security threats.
Qamar Bhatia, vice president and general manager, says: "The unique composition of this new fertilizer makes it extremely difficult to turn it into a weapon. Ammonium nitrate has long been an excellent fertilizer, but this technology makes it safer."
In independent tests using guidelines developed with the US government, Honeywell’s new fertilizer confirmed that it is significantly more difficult to use as an explosive. When mixed with fuel oil – a common method of using ammonium nitrate as an explosive – the new ammonium sulfate nitrate fertilizer did not detonate. In additional tests, the new fertilizer was mixed with explosives and sensitizer; in all tests, the explosive power of traditional ammonium nitrate was significantly reduced or eliminated. The tests were conducted over the last two years by major universities in the US, Canada, and Brazil. The new fertilizer is both non-hazardous and non-oxidizing as tested by Nações Unidas e US Department of Transportation standards.
Honeywell is conducting pilot plant test production of the new fertilizer to finalize scale-up and engineering for manufacturing, and is also in talks with potential manufacturing partners. The company hopes to have limited quantities for sale in certain regions in 2009 and plans to market the material as Sulf-N® 26 fertilizer.
Independent agronomic tests on crops and plants found the new fertilizer to be as effective or more effective compared to alternative fertilizers, including straight mixtures of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate.
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