Circular nitrogen - better for planet and people
There is no shortage of nitrogen, as 78% of our atmosphere is made up of it. The problem, instead, is that nitrogen fertiliser is produced using a method invented more than 100 years ago and very harmful to the climate. Studies show that nitrogen fertiliser is responsible for more than 2% of total global climate emissions, largely because this method requires fossil gas to be burned.
These emissions can be avoided when wastewater treatment plants switch to the Aqua2N technology and start producing nitrogen fertiliser in a circular fashion. In addition, Aqua2N causes no emissions of nitrous oxide, laughing gas, which is a harmful side effect of today’s bacterial methods. Laughing gas is one of the worst greenhouse gases, up to 300 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.
The amounts of nitrogen that could be produced from existing water flows, like city sewers all over the world, is staggering. Wastewater treatment plants employing the Aqua2N technology are effectively turned into raw material plants, while slashing their carbon footprint and preventing eutrophication more efficiently.
There are many reasons to transition to modern, circular methods for nitrogen management.
According to the World Bank, the development of children’s brains in several countries is so severely affected by nitrogen overload that one-third of GDP is lost, not to mention the human suffering.
In one of the most developed countries in the world, the Netherlands, construction output recently took a multi-billion-euro hit when nitrogen levels were found to breach EU regulations, stopping many projects in their tracks.