Washington, D.C.-The fertilizer industry isn’t worried at this point about the switchover in 2010 to urea-based selective catalytic reduction conversion or urea SCR for virtually all new diesel vehicles manufactured in the U.S. Urea SCR is the only technology available that can remove enough NOx from diesel exhaust to comply with strict new limits imposed by EPA. Some believe that the additional urea required for reducing vehicle emissions will create a new demand that could drive up fertilizer prices, but TFI and others disagree. “The diesel rule does not go completely into effect until 2010 and we anticipate the industry will be able to meet both agriculture and industrial demand for nitrogen products,” TFI spokeswoman Kathy Mathers told Green Markets. Mathers noted that nitrogen prices in the past few weeks have been backing off and are no longer at record highs. The newly formed North American SCR Stakeholders Group agrees with TFI’s assessment. Kim Doran, SCR Stakeholders spokesperson, explained, “Demand for this automotive-grade urea is not expected to exceed 5 percent of the world’s production. The new use of urea to control vehicle emissions could lead to increased investment and expand world capacity for urea production.” Urea tanks will be standard equipment for most new diesel trucks, buses, cars, and sport utility vehicles manufactured in the United States after Jan. 1, 2010. An automotive grade of urea will be injected into the vehicles’ exhaust stream to “scrub” nitrogen oxide (NOx) from the diesel exhaust. Doran said the automotive urea, called “diesel exhaust fluid” in the U.S. and trademarked AdBlue in Europe, reduces NOx by as much as 90 percent alone, and can take NOx to near-zero levels when used in combination with diesel particulate filter technology.
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