Securing the world’s food supply: breaking the link between fertilizers and gas

Around half of the world's food production depends on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and virtually all of it is made by combining atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen to produce ammonia, the primary feedstock for the urea, ammonium nitrate that goes onto the world's fields. Today, that hydrogen comes almost entirely from natural gas.

As a result, fertilizer prices have always moved in lockstep with natural gas. When the gas supply is disrupted, food security is impacted.

This is not a new vulnerability. But it’s one that the industry has tolerated because cheap gas made it easy to do so. As we enter an era of sustained geopolitical instability around the world, and particularly in the regions rich in oil and gas, the cost of that tolerance is becoming impossible to ignore.

The alternative to gas in fertilizer production

The global nitrogen fertilizer market is worth over US$200 billion annually. It runs almost entirely on gas-derived hydrogen, and producers who were already looking at ways to decarbonise are now also seeking to insulate themselves from the geopolitical shocks that have made grey, or fossil-fuel-produced, hydrogen supply so volatile.

Russia and Belarus together account for a significant share of global fertilizer exports; the Middle East crisis has compounded the problem. Fertilizer producers across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are actively seeking alternatives.

Green hydrogen produced via electrolysis is the natural answer. It can be made locally, from renewable energy, without dependence on long-distance fossil gas. Yet it currently accounts for just 1% of global production, not because the demand is absent, but because conventional electrolysers are expensive to build and operate.

Historically, electrolysers relied on precious metals, required highly purified water, and struggled to operate efficiently under the fluctuating power conditions inherent to wind and solar generation. These constraints pushed green hydrogen projects towards locations with reliable connections to energy and water grids. The result was a technology that, until now, had been theoretically compelling but practically constrained.

Rethinking green hydrogen for today’s environment

Latent Drive’s mission has been to enable abundant, affordable and unconstrained hydrogen production. By directly coupling processes with renewables, and splitting water without pre-treatment, the company engineers out constraints to manufacture cheaply and reliably in almost any location.

A viable alternative to electrodes

A useful aspect is the enablement for the replacement of traditional electrodes with Catrode^® technology, a combined catalyst and electrode made of ordinary stainless steel. It eliminates expensive metal coating and production processes to create components that cost roughly a tenth of conventional electrodes.

Hydrogen producers around the world are also choosing Catrode technology because its design enables it to thrive under fluctuating energy input, allowing it to be co-located with renewable generation. No longer is consistent electricity needed from conventional fossil-fuel power stations.

Solving the water challenge

Additionally, the SeaStack^® technology allows direct electrolysis of seawater, municipal and industrial wastewater, even desalination brine. This eliminates the expensive pre-treatment infrastructure that has constrained where electrolysers can realistically be deployed.

SeaStack can also produce a small but useful volume of fresh water as a by-product of hydrogen generation, turning what is typically a resource constraint into what could be considered as an additional value stream in especially water stressed regions.

This is not the future: it is real, and now

While these technologies are novel, they are real: Catrode technology is already in deployment around the world, and Latent Drive has secured a significant pipeline. The company has seen growing interest from industrial partners across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe for lower-cost, reliable green hydrogen that can support ammonia and fertilizer production. There is a real shift in this sector toward solutions that both decarbonise operations, and localise supply, while reducing dependence on volatile global markets.

The securest supply is the one you produce yourself

The market has been waiting for green hydrogen to become practical in the places where it is needed most: coastal, solar-powered, water-stressed, and without reliable grid infrastructure. Conventional electrolyser technology was not designed for those conditions, but ours is.

The securest hydrogen supply is the one produced on-site, co-located both with local renewables and end product manufacture, free from dependence on global gas markets and shipping lanes. And the technology to deliver that is no longer a future ambition.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldfertilizer.com/special-reports/18062026/securing-the-worlds-food-supply-breaking-the-link-between-fertilizers-and-gas/