German Notes on BAT of the production of | Umweltbundesamt

Multi-nutrient fertilizers have increasingly gained importance in the last decades mainly for economic reasons, but also due to technical and physiological aspects. According to the type of manufacture, they are divided into mixed fertilizers and complex fertilizers. The manufacture of mixed fertilizers is generally effected by simply mixing dry single fertilizers, so that there are not caused any essential emissions or residues. For this reason the present project only concentrates on complex fertilizers. In this case the compound of nutrients takes place already during the manufacture process. Among multi-nutrient fertilizers the most important group consists of NPK fertilizers, which contain all three macro-nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) and therefore they are also called triple-nutrient fertilizers. Even without a phosphorus or potassium share, these fertilizers belong to the group of multi-nutrient fertilizers, but then they are called NP or NK fertilizer. Normally these fertilizers can a so be produced in the NPK plants and their emissions are comparable with those from the NPK fertilizer production. If a NPK fertilizer additionally contains trace elements, it is colloquially called complete fertilizer.