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Influence of some lime-containing additives on the thermal behavior of urea

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Abstract

Urea is one of the main nitrogen fertilizers used in agriculture. But being well soluble in water, hardly 50% of its nitrogen is assimilated by plants. One possibility to eliminate this disadvantage is to use coating agents for modification of urea to obtain a controlled-realized fertilizer. The aim of this research was to study the influence of different lime-containing additives on the thermal behavior and decomposition kinetics of urea in oxidizing atmosphere. Commercial fertilizer-grade urea (46.4% N) and analytical-grade CaO, MgO, CaCO3, MgCO3 were used in the experiments. In addition, one Estonian limestone and one dolomite sample were used as additive or coating material. The experiments with a Setaram Setsys 1750 thermoanalyzer coupled to a Nicolet 380 FTIR Spectrometer by a heated transfer line were carried out under non-isothermal conditions up to 900 °C at the heating rate of 5 °C min−1 and to calculate kinetic parameters, additionally, at 1, 2, and 10 °C min−1 in the atmosphere containing 80% of Ar and 20% of O2. The differential isoconversional method of Friedman was used to calculate the kinetic parameters. The results obtained indicate that thermooxidative decomposition of urea as well as the blends of urea with lime-containing materials and urea prills coated with limestone or dolomite powder follows a complex reaction mechanism.

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Acknowledgements

This study was partly supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (SF0140082s08) and the Estonian Science Foundation (G7548).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Chemical and Materials Technology, Tallinn University of Technology, Ehitajate tee 5, 19086, Tallinn, Estonia

    Irina Klimova, Tiit Kaljuvee, Valdek Mikli & Andres Trikkel

Authors
  1. Irina Klimova
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  2. Tiit Kaljuvee
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  3. Valdek Mikli
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  4. Andres Trikkel
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Correspondence to Tiit Kaljuvee.

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Klimova, I., Kaljuvee, T., Mikli, V. et al. Influence of some lime-containing additives on the thermal behavior of urea. J Therm Anal Calorim 111, 253–258 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-012-2244-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-012-2244-3

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