Enhanced-efficiency fertilizers

Join us as Stamicarbon R&D engineer Naveen Kumar dives into the challenges posed by traditional fertilizers and highlights the importance of achieving a delicate balance between food production and environmental sustainability. Learn how the concept of nutrient use efficiency could be the key to a greener future.

Chapters

• 0:04 Balancing Sustainability and Food Production
• 9:43 Improving Nutrient Efficiency in Agriculture

Transcript

Mark Sleijser (Host)

All right, welcome, everybody, to the first episode of season two of Stamitalks, where we talk about fertilizer technology. For those who listen to the podcast for the first time, of course, season one is still available on all major streaming platforms. You can check out the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and also with video on YouTube, where you can check out also all last year episodes, including some very interesting client interviews as well. This year we'll have a lot of episodes as well. We plan to continue to somewhere before summer 2025, and we'll cover different topics: mechanical, revamps, digital, green ammonia and many more on about a monthly pace, and the first episode today is going to be about efficiency-enhanced fertilizers. With us is Naveen Kumar, which is an R&D engineer. Naveen, welcome. 

01:16

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Thank you. Thank you, Mark.

01:17

Mark Sleijser (Host)

You're with Stamicarbon for about five years. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Yes. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

So, you started in 2019. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Yeah.

01:23

Mark Sleijser (Host)

Knowing a bit of your background, I think in 2018, so a year before you started, we developed our Vision 2030. With how Stamicarbon sees the future of fertilizers and, of course, also the role of Stamicarbon in that. How did you end up with Stamicarbon?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

01:45

So, basically, chemistry is, I think, the uniting point. I have a background in chemistry. I was doing my post-doctorate in TU Delft and then was working for a startup as a material scientist and that's where I came to know about some feedstocks which were used also as fertilizers and that I thought that, okay, there are some other applications of these feedstocks which were sustainable at that time for the startup on which I was working, and I looked up which are the companies who are working on this direction. And maybe that's the right timing - you mentioned 2018 - the first hit was Stamicarbon and that's where I saw some vacancies and I applied for the strategic R&D engineer job. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

02:23

Yeah, I think I've sort of witnessed your progress in the past years and it's really nice to be able to have you on the podcast to talk about this topic. Maybe first of all, fertilizer was, at least from that point in your career, new to you. Can you describe your thoughts about fertilizer at that point in time? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

02:56

Yeah, actually, urea and all the other fertilizers were quite new for me. I have a background from agricultural family, so I know the use cases of these, but at same time , I also know the drawbacks of these fertilizers. After joining Stamicarbon, I also attended many conferences and we, as mineral fertilizer or synthetic fertilizer people, have been the bad boys in these conferences, because there are some negative impacts of using fertilizers, and we accept these challenges. You can have biodiversity losses, you can have soil degradation if you don't use them properly or if you use fertilizers in excess amounts. And that's why in today's topic, I want to highlight all these challenges as well as what we are working at Stamicarbon on developing different technologies to make these fertilizers more sustainable. 

 Mark Sleijser (Host)

03:45

Okay, so, briefly, high-level, I don't want to dive too deep into all negative elements, but I think it's good to mention them. You already mentioned that there's soil degradation and I think that you can over-apply or under-apply fertilizer. Can you share some more? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

04:01

So basically, let's see. I'll give some statistics and then that will really give you impression. More than 60% of the nitrogen being applied is lost in the air or in the waterways. More than 85% of the phosphorus is not used in the first year of the application. More than 55% of the potassium is leached or soil eroded, so it's lost via all these mechanisms. So these are very high numbers. Actually, you cannot have those high waste of the nutrients which you're applying. First of all, it's economic loss for farmers who are using them. Secondly, it's also harmful for the environment. So if the phosphorus is going in the water bodies, you can have eutrophication kind of phenomena. You can think of acid rains and also dying different animals and microorganisms, which are present in the soil, and so on. And you can think of the ammonia which is being volatilized is also contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions. The N2O, which is being emitted, or the CO2, which is being emitted, is also participating to the greenhouse gas emissions. So these are the negatives.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

05:17

Okay, so then, of course, the quick and dirty solution might be just stop using fertilizer. Why don't we do that? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

05:33

Yeah, we have growing population that has need for food and growing food with the limited arable land, you have to intensify the production, the yield, and one of the ways you can do that is by using these fertilizers. I'm not against using any other type of fertilizers, they are all good, but I would at least make a point that if you don't use mineral or synthetic fertilizers, then the production or the feeding of the world population will be hindered or limited, and then you will have a lot of people suffering from food securities. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

06:00

Okay, so basically, it's balancing the need for food and the need for a sustainable environment. 

06:06

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Indeed, true. 

06:07

Mark Sleijser (Host)

Okay, so how do you balance those?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

06:09

Yeah, so basically you need, there is a concept called nutrient use efficiency. You have to use the nutrient efficiently. 

06:16

Mark Sleijser (Host)

What is nutrient use efficiency? 

06:18

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Nutrient use efficiency is basically that all the inputs of nutrients you are putting in the soil versus the harvested nutrients from the plants. So if you divide the harvested nutrients with the total input you are giving to the soil, that's the ratio is your nutrient use efficiency.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

06:39

Okay. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

06:40

So if I give more examples, let's say, in the beginning, in 1960s or 1950s, when the countries were not applying much of the nutrients in the soil, the nutrient use efficiency for example, a country in sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi, was very high because they were not putting any nutrient in the soil but the harvest was high because the nutrients were taken up by the soil. 

07:02

Mark Sleijser (Host)

Rich soil.

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

07:05

Yeah, and that was called soil mining. It's called soil mining. It's still, your nutrient efficiency is high. It's not a good thing for the soil because you're eroding the soil with the nutrients. And then what happened? The country started applying different kind of fertilizers, mainly nitrogen-based fertilizer, because that was easy to make and also cheaper and easy to transport. If you think of countries like China and India, there are a lot of subsidies around these fertilizers as well, and what happens is that when you apply these nutrients, you're applying too much of the nutrients, so your input is going very high, but your yield is not increasing in that proportion, meaning your NUE is going down. So you can think of it as a bell curve, an inverted bell curve that your nutrient use efficiency is going down, down, down, and when you have the balanced nutrients, you can improve this nutrient use efficiency, and one of the ways is with the sustainable fertilizers. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

07:59

Okay, so then, what I've been told, like, in the Netherlands, we used to use the disk of five things to eat for a human. So I think a plant, I think the International Fertilizer Association has a list of, I think, 17 different types of nutrients that a plant needs. Are they all equal? How does that work? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

08:23

No, they are totally different. You will see, in the different stages of the plant growth you will need different amount of a certain nutrient. So the major, the macronutrients, are N, P, K and S, sulfur. And then there are secondary nutrients, which are calcium, magnesium, these kinds of nutrients. And then there are micronutrients, which are like zinc, copper, iron, boron, these kinds of things. So in total, there are 17 micro and macro and secondary nutrients, but they are all interrelated. In the beginning, people focused more on nitrogen or phosphorus and potassium fertilizers, but now, with the more and more advancement of the studies, we know that all these things are interconnected. And if you don't have the balance of these nutrients, your yield will still be stagnant and you will not further grow in your yield. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

09:22

Okay, so how does a... You already mentioned that you have somewhat a farmer family background. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

09:28

Yes. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

09:29

How does a typical farmer apply those? Because you can't, if you need to distribute 17 different fertilizers, some very minor and some a lot, how do you, how do you manage that as a farmer?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

09:41

Yeah, a very good question, actually. And in developing nations like China or India, there is a lot of blending happening. So they blend different types of nutrients together and then they throw or they do one after each other. So first, let's say, for example, they will put nitrogen fertilizer, then they will put phosphorus or maybe sulfur fertilizer. So that's how they are doing it in the developing nations. In developed countries, there are already technologies where they can compound all the nutrients together, maybe, and then throw it in the land. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

10:13

What's the advantage of that? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

10:14

So, that's an advantage actually. So, you use machineries for throwing the fertilizers and if they're, let's say, different blended fertilizers, they have different density or different shape, you can throw with the same machine the nutrients in different range. That you don't want to have because the plant needs them as close as possible. And that's a good idea that if you have a compounded fertilizer with all these N, P, K and micro and macronutrients, and if they are close to the plant, they are released homogeneously for the plant.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

10:50

So, if I would use one of those machines, and think of those, I think everybody has seen one of those, if you have a tennis class and you have this machine that throws the tennis balls to practice, but if you would use that machine to throw on one side marbles and at the same time big bowling balls, they would end up at a different place at the court. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

11:12

Indeed, and you want to avoid that because the plant needs them centrally, close to the roots where it's growing. And if that same ball or that marble has everything together in that one single piece, then you avoid those situations. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

11:27

You want to put the marble in the bowling ball, so it ends up at the same place near the plant. That's the idea. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

11:32

Indeed. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

11:33

Okay, that's nice. So then, that's sort of the nutrient use efficiency - to make all the input from what you throw on the land also maximizes the output. You mentioned in the beginning that there are some staggering numbers. If we just talk about nitrogen, 60% is mostly not used. How do we improve that?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

11:54

So, first I would like to explain a little bit more on the losses, how the losses happen. There are two types of losses. One is via the air. So when you apply, let's say, a nitrogen fertilizer, mainly urea, it's being converted to ammonium ion first, and from ammonium it is converted to nitrate ion and then the nitrate is being uptaken by the plant. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

12:16

And this is done via soil bacteria? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

12:18

Via soil enzymes. So the urease enzyme is the one who is catalyzing the urea breakdown to ammonium, and then there are enzymes which convert ammonium to nitrate. But these conversions are, in a way, not as per the need of the plant. So, the one which is the amount which are not taken up by the plant will be either released in the air, as let's say, ammonia volatilization, or when they are converted, being to the nitrates, the nitrates can leach in the water bodies and then nitrification, denitrification process can make nitrate to N2O or NOx, or other gaseous emissions back to the air. So, these are the emissions which are happening in the air and the water. And the second thing is the uptake of nutrients. They are also being limited, because if you keep on applying only one type of nutrient and the other nutrients are not present, then those nutrients will not be taken up by the plant because the yield or the uptake is dependent on the other limiting nutrients. So you want to have the balanced nutrients as well. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

13:25

So there's a bottleneck in the availability of nutrients. If you don't have sufficient of one, then all the others as well won't be taken up. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

13:34

There's a law called Liebig's Law of Minimum, where you can think of a barrel full of water which is made of different planks and the planks have different heights. So, the plank which has the lowest height, that's the rate-limiting factor, actually. For example, it's boron. If the boron is not present, the water will be coming out of that barrel. You keep on increasing the height of the plank which is on nitrogen or maybe on phosphorus. That will not avoid filling up the level of that barrel. It's the boron, or let's say the second plank is zinc - those are the two lowest planks in that barrel. You can keep on putting nitrogen or phosphorus. The amount of the water held in that barrel will not increase. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

14:16

So it's a 17-plank barrel that we're managing. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

14:22

Yes, indeed, that's a 17-plank barrel. That's one law, actually. And another law I want to talk as well is the Mulder's chart. That's a famous Dutch scientist, Jan Mulder, in 1850s-1860s, in that time period, he invented a chart called Mulder's chart. It doesn't talk about the amounts needed but talks about the relation of different nutrients among each other. For example, if you keep on applying nitrogen, if the nitrogen in the excess amount, it will inhibit the uptake of boron, copper or potassium, and if it's in the balanced amount, then it can promote the uptake of boron, and copper, and potassium. 

15:04

So, now think of our example of India as a country, which is very soil deficient in boron. Boron deficiency is very common in Indian and Chinese soil. The urea is a very subsidized fertilizer in India. A farmer can easily buy it. They keep on applying urea as a nitrogen source, but they know that the boron is not being uptaken because the nitrogen is so much excess in the soil, it will hinder the uptake of the boron. So, your end grain of that cereal will not have those micronutrients, which are hindered by the excess amount of that particular nutrient. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

15:39

So, does that only impact the soil, or is there also a difference in the type of crop that you would grow on the soil? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

15:47

It would impact the crop as well, because those are the nutrients being uptaken by the crop. So, if the soil has excess amount and if it's not able to uptake the required nutrients, it will also hinder the growth of the crop. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

16:05

And we can imagine that not all crops need the same amount of nutrients. I think the balance of the NPKs, and also the micronutrients, of course, would differ per type of crop. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

16:15

Yeah. For example, in the flowering stage of the crop you need more potassium, but at that time if you apply more nitrogen, that excess amount of nitrogen will even hinder the uptake of potassium. So, we want to avoid those kinds of situations. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

16:28

Okay, it sounds like a very complex thing to manage, so what can you do? What can Stamicarbon do to support this? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

16:38

Yeah, so we have been working on two fronts. One is nutrient enhancement. So, you want to have all the nutrients together in one granule and you want to have them in the right proportion. That is one thing. Second thing is that we want to avoid losses, and that you can do by having stabilized fertilizers. So we are also working towards adding different inhibitors. Examples are urease inhibitor or nitrification inhibitor to avoid all these gaseous losses. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

17:08

Okay. Yeah, that sounds very interesting and at the same time, as I mentioned, it sounds complicated. You've been working on this for four or five years. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Yes.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

What's the main challenge?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

17:21

The main challenge is, I would say, to find out the right type of nutrients, which can be added together, and the technology, which can handle it to make it in one granule. So you have, let's say, a liquid as a fertilizer, they're your main fertilizers, and you want to add different recipes of these nutrients together.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

Depending on the crop?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

On the crop…

Mark Sleijser (Host)

And on the soil.

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

On the soil, and then you want to have a solid granule which comes out having all these nutrients together. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

17:56

Which you can then feed into your tennis ball machine. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

In the tennis ball machine, indeed. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

17:58

So, and that's the challenge, you want to have the technology which is suitable to do that, and that's where we are working on and we are very happy and proud that we have developments in a very good direction where we can have flexible addition of different nutrients together. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

18:17

That sounds very promising. So that's the, but that's not talking about, that's not the stabilized fertilizer, that's only about the nutrient enhancement. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

Nutrient enhancement, indeed. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

So then, to avoid losses, you said, we can add inhibitors. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

18:33

Yeah, there are two ways. You can add inhibitors, or you can also have controlled-release coating as well. That's another way where you can control the release of the nutrients so that they are released in the need or as per the need of the plant. That's two ways. Both are equally needed. Actually, you want to also have inhibited or stabilized fertilizers. In fact, in Europe, in many countries, there is a law that you cannot use one particular fertilizer without having a stabilized form. So you want to use those kinds of fertilizers. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

19:06

I think that's true nowadays at least, Germany started it, but now, I think, also in the UK, I think, some others that have this. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

19:13

Indeed. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

19:14

Okay, and you also shortly mentioned coated fertilizer. That's a completely different technology. So would it be, just maybe a dumb question, but if I would coat a fertilizer with an inhibitor inside, would that be too much of a good thing, or could you combine those different technologies?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

19:34

Yeah, there's always some advantages and disadvantages of having a coating. Coating gives you very immediate application or release of those things which are part of that coating. But at the same point, if you want to think about the shelf life of those products, it can degrade if it's in the form of coating, compared to compound. If it's part of that ball, everything is intact within that ball. So, you want to have everything in that granule, and our first preference is that all the things, which are needed, are part of that granule, even in the inhibitor side as well. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

20:11

Okay, we've mentioned what you're working on, and the reason we have you on this podcast now and not five years ago is that I think that we're getting somewhere. Can you share a bit more on what's coming? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

20:22

So, basically, we already have some technologies, which are being offered from Stamikarbon. There is urea ammonium sulfate technology, which is being already offered as a specialty fertilizer from Stamicarbon. We have controlled-release technology as well, which is being offered by Stamicarbon, and in the coming few years we will have more technology for flexible addition of different nutrients. Think of all sorts of required nutrients together in one single granule, which can be compounded together. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

20:52

Okay, I see your eyes twinkle if you start talking about it. That's a good thing. So, or maybe, I see your eyes twinkle, so you're enthusiastic about this. But let's fast forward five years. This is all in place and we have this technology and it's being applied. What would be the benefit for the world, but also for the farmer? Why is this a good thing? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

21:14

So, you can think of that the farmer would not need to apply these nutrients for multiple times. So now he's doing different nutrients in one-by-one, in steps, or maybe blending, and if they can apply it in the right time and the right requirements, you will have more economic benefits, so they will not lose these nutrients, meaning they will have more benefit of using these together in one go. You will have the sustainability aspect as well, so you will have more efficient nutrient uptake, not have leaching or so on, and you will have more... Farmer would have more benefit in terms of crop growth as well. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

22:04

So, the farmer can spend more time with family, he spends less time farming, he increases his yield, cost then probably would go down for the farmer. Leaching and volatilization would decrease, so the environment wins, and you would need less fertilizer, so it's also a money saver. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

22:31

Indeed.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

22:34

So that's a lot of things to be enthusiastic about. So, when is this available? When can we have this?

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

22:40

Yeah, as I said, there are a few technologies which we already are able to license to our producers and in the coming years we will have more technologies which will be available for flexible addition. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

22:53

Still under development. I hear I can't get it out of you, so I'll stop asking. Is there anything you want to add to this? 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

23:02

Maybe just to give a perspective that if you increase the nutrient use efficiency, what would happen? And just to put a number, if you increase the nutrient use efficiency from 0.5 to 0.7, you would end up saving around 33 million tons of nitrogen, which will then be part of the harvest, not lost, and you could avoid the surplus pollution of 55 million ton of nitrogen. So it's really important to work on these topics and we are very happy that we are part of that development. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

23:37

Well, thank you so much for your efforts and explaining all of this. I'm really excited about your work, Naveen, so I hope to have you back soon, so we can talk about this a bit more. But thanks for all your insight and contribution. 

Naveen Kumar (Guest)

23:51

Thank you, Mark. 

23:52

Mark Sleijser (Host)

Okay, and thanks to all our listeners for tuning into this episode, and we hope to see you next time. Thank you.