General Chat

Without being technical.
Inorganic fertilizers contain nitrogen that is taken from the air we all breath.
Won't bore you with the process - it's been going on for many, many years. (Although if you wish, Google 'syngas compressors for ammonia')
But take out the nitrogen and you are left with other gasses, including CO2. And markets were found for this by-product.

From Wiki.
Urea is widely used in fertilizers as a source of nitrogen (N) and is an important raw material for the chemical industry.
Friedrich Wöhler discovered that urea can be produced from inorganic starting materials, which was an important conceptual milestone in chemistry in 1828. It showed for the first time that a substance previously known only as a byproduct of life could be synthesized in the laboratory without biological starting materials, thereby contradicting the widely held doctrine of vitalism, which stated that only living things could produce the chemicals of life


Long time ago I was driving into the Midlands for my job when I noticed petrol stations with the ICI sign. ICI? They don't do petrol?
Oh yes they did. It was a by-product in one of their process units.

Hmmm. I wonder what was used before the gathering of CO2.

A couple of thoughts:

If CO2 is a by-product of the fertiliser industry - surely, in this 'blame someone, but not the hierarchy' age, vegetarianism could be to blame for the lack of it :-D

If CO2 comes from fertiliser production, why aren't sewerage plants being used for its production?

There was mention of the lot on the news channel I watched, Bob. As you pointed out in your first post, packaging of food, drinks was included along with emissions from production.

Ssorry Bob, I thought I was following on from your second paragraph.

My point was....it is is motoring hat gets the blame for the rise in CO2


no mention of these other uses

The commercially used Co2 is a by product of the fertiliser industry. The two fertiliser factories have closed due to the high cost of gas!

Just about to have my second, Maggie, and I don’t give a hoot, cos Joe Public is always going to be on the back foot, is always going to be the one who pays for it, yet we aren’t the ones responsible for the upkeep of the stonking great yachts ….. or are we? :-|

Hang on - I've had my 2 'wake up' cups.

We're running out of a gas that EVERYONE - every animal,on the planet EXHALES????

So, from a very simplistic view - ie. I haven't had my first cup of tea yet, it could be manufactureres who are belching C02 into the atmosphere, but they've never paid a surcharge on their profits for the pollution they cause?
Any surcharge they 'pay' will come from the customer, because they 'have' to increase their profits by an astronomical amount, year on year?

No, Bob, you've got it right, I saw the same news!

You just know we're going to be hit when someone starts saying the cost of packaging has risen by 17.3 or 17.4%, don't you!

This means, of course, any plastic bag that we may, in the past, have had to pay, say, 5 pence for, will rise by such a massive amount that we may likely be hit for 10 pence a bag! I doubt whether sellers will be willing to absorb the cost themselves and I'd be surprised if anyone will bother to work out what 17.3 % of five pence is and it isn't difficult. After all, as a rough estimate, 17% of £1 is 17 pence, of 10 pence is 1.7 pence so of 5 pence, .85 - but I bet they don't just add one penny to the cost!

And so on, down the line, to all packaging , meat, fish, fizzy drinks etc, clothes, toys, books, household goods, everything we use, in fact - cars, houses - the lot!

My guess is that costs will be rounded up for everything too (it's never down, is it?) - just so the general public can keep the manufacturing heads in the style to which they've become accustomed, you understand. :-0

It makes me want to don my armour and dust off the old brain cells in case I'm being done, in fact! :-S

Have I got this wrong?
various governments are at odds about the amount of Co2 released into the atmosphere and are blaming car owner/usage for this..and administering taxes to combat this....(emissions).

yet according to the news this evening practically everything we eat from stunning livestock, before slaughter and into food packaging to keep food fresh...and fizzy drinks,,is injected with CO2..