New Methods for Determination of Composition of Urea-Ammonium Nitrate Solution - Control Of the Final Product

Abstract

UAN- urea-ammonium nitrate solutions are called the fertilizers of the 21^st century. The product contains all available forms of nitrogen: nitrate (-NO₃), ammonium (-NH₄) and amide (-NH₂). Using this kind of fertilizer fulfills the need of plants for nitrogen even they are in a dormant state. The new process needs tight analytical control of the process which is essential for the final product to be of the right quality. The research was dedicated to finding new, better and easier methods compared with methods described in EU ordinance. TOC total organic carbon and method of refraction and density were checked. The first one - analysis of total organic carbon, which is converted to the content of the amide nitrogen, by using the addition of acid and oxidizer during analysis allows the determination of content in the sample up to 100% ± 0.5%. Results for the second method - correlation between refraction-density in dependence on concentration, allow the analysis of the composition of the content of the amide nitrogen, and the sum of nitrate and ammonium nitrogen in the sample. New analytical methods were developed and implemented in the production process.