Fertilizers
Fertilizers are plant nutrients prepared in a natural way, as is the case with all organic fertilizers, or fertilizers are in the form of mineral salts prepared artificially.
Fertilizers are added to the soil to compensate for the lack of food in it and meet the plant’s food needs
Fertilizer is nothing but a substance or chemical compound that is manufactured in laboratories and factories and contains nutritional elements that the plant needs during the stages of growth and is added to the soil or with irrigation water.
Types of chemical fertilizers
Simple: These are fertilizers that contain one fertilizer element, such as phosphate, potassium, magnesium, and calcium fertilizers.
Compound: These are fertilizers that contain more than one fertilizer component, such as NPK
Manufacture of compound fertilizers
1- Manufacturing compound fertilizers may be through chemical mixing or mechanical mixing.
2- Manufacturing NPK chemical fertilizers and other multi-element fertilizers requires great care in mixing ratios.
3- Liquid fertilizers must be free of solids to avoid clogging the feed pipes with the liquid mixture. Phosphoric acid is used for this purpose and as a source of phosphorus.
The fertilizer resulting from the mixture must contain the following:
1- It does not cause unwanted chemical changes during mixing, storage or transportation. The most important of these changes are:
A- Loss of nitrogen through volatilization.
B- Phosphate precipitation in the presence of calcium alone.
2- The natural properties of the resulting fertilizer must be good, so that it does not cause hardening or separation of the different granules