The most important use of urea is undoubtedly in agriculture as a nitrogen fertilizer: it is the most concentrated fertilizer (46% nitrogen soluble in water) in a form comparable to the nitrogen contained in organic fertilizers.
Furthermore, it is widely used in the preparation of plastics through the condensation of urea with formaldehyde: fabrics treated with these plastic solutions, if subjected to heating, are made extraordinarily resistant to creasing.
This treatment does not reduce their softness but gives rayon, linen and cotton fabrics characteristics comparable to those of wool and silk.
Urea is mainly synthesized from ammonia.
In recent years there has been a notable technological development of ammonia applications in heavy and light transport (GAC 2023), in energy generation and in distributed energy storage.
Being easier to manage than hydrogen, ammonia could replace fossil fuels such as efuel, guaranteeing up to 90% lower emissions.
An ammonia-based economy is emerging through multiple generations of technological development, such as current technology (first generation) and immediate future approaches (second generation) that are based on the Haber-Bosch process.
Third generation technology breaks this link with the Haber-Bosch process and allows the direct reduction of nitrogen into ammonia electrochemically.
