Nitricity
Nitricity electrifies and distributes the production of fertilizer.
Nitricity’s breakthrough technology produces fertilizer using only air, water, and renewable energy. This decarbonizes the fertilizer manufacturing process and, because Nitricity fertilizer is made where it’s used, eliminates the need for expensive and hazardous storage and transportation.
Fertilizer is fundamental to modern agriculture. In fact, without the synthetic production of nitrogen fertilizer, we could only support about a third of our current global population. But conventional fertilizer, as currently produced and distributed, is bad for the environment and contributes to climate change at each step of the process that takes it from factory to field. Just the manufacture of ammonia—the main chemical in most fertilizers—consumes about one percent of the world’s total energy production, most of which comes from burning fossil fuels. For every one pound of fertilizer put into the soil today, as many as eight pounds of CO2 equivalent emissions are released.
Nitricity’s technology has the potential to disrupt the long-unchanged fertilizer manufacturing process, reduce global carbon emissions, and dramatically simplify the ammonia supply chain.
Its groundbreaking low-cost, solar-powered plasma cells produce fertilizer right on the farm using only air, water, and renewable energy. To understand how it works, think of how green a field is after a lightning storm. That’s because lightning breaks down nitrogen in the air and rain water then brings it to the soil where it helps plants to grow. Nitricity artificially creates lightning to extract nitrogen from the air and combines it with other nutrients that integrate directly into a farm’s irrigation system. This produces the cleanest, most efficient, and least carbon reliant fertilizer there is and also gives farmers control over how much fertilizer to use at any given time.
King Philanthropies’ investment in Nitricity will help it continue to develop and bring to market cost-effective fertilizer for both established farms and developing markets, while minimizing the environmental impact of the production, distribution, and application of nitrogen fertilizers.
