Or, Petroleum Fertilizer Part II.

One expression of the we're-all-gonna-die peak oil agenda is the claim that the world is dependent, or addicted, to fertilizer made from fossil hydrocarbons, and that when they run out we will starve to death. It might be useful to investigate the history of such fertilizer - especially nitrates - since these nitrogen compounds get the majority of sneers.

There's nothing new about the world quest for nitrates which began in earnest in 1241 when the Mongols brought Chinese black powder - gunpowder - with them during their frolic through Poland and Hungary. They used it for bamboo pipe bombs which were good for blowing down city gates to admit attackers.

It didn't take Europeans long to twig to the potential, and coupled with their skills in metallurgy, especially large cast pieces, resulted in their inventive contribution - the bombard or cannon. The Europeans had gotten very good at making fine cast pieces in their quest to produce huge church bells which wouldn't crack when rung.

The age of castles was doomed since Europeans soon had cannons 12 feet long throwing large boulders at castle walls. Sultan Mehmed "the Conqueror" in turn hired some Transylvanian metal-smiths to make him cannons twice as large and was soon hurling half-tonne boulders at the walls of Constantinople. Thus several long disputes were decisively settled, including the 100 years war between the English and French as French cannons drove the English from their castles in northern France.

Nitrates quickly became strategic assets of national importance. They were the chief ingredient of black powder which at the time standardized at a 6:1:1 mix of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. The source of these nitrates was ye olde compost pile. "Petermen" scoured Europe looking for well rotted dung heaps which could be dug out and processed by boiling and straining to concentrate semi-pure nitrate crystals. The petermen became such a problem that the English set up a Parliamentary Commission in 1606 to look into abuses of property by them, but instead ended up getting King James I to issue a proclamation about the duties of subjects to help create more nitrates, and that he would be cross if they didn't cooperate. Soon after King Charles I gave more precise orders to his subjects to carefully preserve even their own urine during the whole year, and that he would be very, very cross with those who failed to heed his orders.

That nitrates were both necessary to agriculture and war was a conflict that would play out all over the world during the coming centuries. Farm soils were deprived of nutrients in order to support military efforts, but food is as necessary to war as weapons. The shortage kept swords and bows in use long after they were technically obsolete, and wars of conquest were waged in part to gain access to supplies of nitrates. India was conquered by the English, driving out the French, in part because India was a principal source of saltpeter at the time.

The development of world trade by ocean going vessels, resulting in part from the closure of overland trade with the east due to the descendants of Sultan Mehmed "the Conqueror" and their cannons, and so the discovery of the Americas which had not only gold but also Peruvian guano and Chilean nitrates was discussed a little in Secret Ingredients. The US eventually got involved too as it became a world power. A fair amount of geopolitics of the era was driven in part by the scramble to claim guano islands. The collection of islands once known as "American Polynesia" were mainly barren rocks with deep guano deposits. The Guano Islands Act of 1856 encouraged entrepreneurs to claim and annex such islands as American territory. 59 of them were claimed. American projection of power in the Pacific was a direct consequence. The discovery of gold in California, and later Alaska was involved in all this too, but that's another post.

The guano market collapsed due to the mining of Chilean nitrates, but not before time since the highest quality deposits had already been exhausted. For half a century those nitrates fed the world market but that too would come to an end, in part due to shipping disruption and war at the beginning of the 20th century. The ancestors of those who chant "no blood for oil" might have chanted "no blood for guano, or Chilean nitrates" in that earlier era, since those substances were the precious fossils of their time.

The problem became intense as the world girded for the war to end war. It is fitting that a Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland who was trying to develop a rail gun in order to attract funding for his research into electromagnetism accidentally discovered how to make nitrates with electricity when his experiment exploded due to a short circuit. He could smell nitrates in the smoky air and realized that he had just made fertilizer. He partnered with Sam Eyde, a civil engineer interested in hydroelectric power, to develop a fertilizer plant using the newly patented Birkeland-Eyde process for the production of Norgesalpeter - Norwegian Saltpeter, i.e. calcium nitrate. This made sense because there was no good way to use all that Norwegian electricity until power transmission from remote locations was developed some years later.

But the Germans had an even greater need for nitrates since they had strained relations with the world, and they also had an advanced chemistry industry. Haber and Bosch developed a cheaper method for nitrate production soon after and the Birkeland-Eyde process was made obsolete. Even Norsk Hydo, the company they founded, licensed the Haber-Bosch process and abandoned Birkeland-Eyde on the advice of Kristian Birkeland. Things got complicated for Norsk Hydo during the war since their customers included Germany and their owners included France, while Norway tried to remain neutral in the war.

The Haber-Bosch process is dominant today but that may change as the feedstocks become more scarce. That won't be the end of nitrates any more than they were the beginning. One way or another life is dependent on them, a fact that makes perfect sense when you consider than our atmosphere is primarily nitrogen with a large dollop of oxygen, the two substances that make nitrate, NO3. It falls from the sky after having been synthesized by lightning in a process not too unlike that patented by Kristian Birkeland and Sam Eyde. As Klaus Lackner has recently claimed "Technology in general and energy at its base ultimately define the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans". When we think about nitrogen, oxygen and energy, and their relationship to nitrates, Lackner's claim makes huge sense. That's only part of what he meant but the facts are clear that energy is our only scarce input since the air is filled with the other needed ingredients. We can't rely on lightning to do our work for us, but we can make that too now that we have technologies to make electricity.

Fossil fuels will not always be used to make nitrates - they are becoming expensive and less abundant - and another chapter will close in the long story of nitrates. The story will continue as it has in the past with new sources and methods, many of which are understood already but aren't competitive with cheaper fossil fuels. . . yet. The details are unpredictable but it's a good bet that someone like Kristian Birkeland will patent a new winning process that will serve for a time.