Interventions on fertilizer manufacture

Camillus Silva

I have read with interest the article in the features column of the Daily News of January 23. The author of this article has attributed the reason for the suspension of urea production in 1985 to poor counterpart support and poor management and the failure of the apatite project as due to pressure brought about by misguided youth. I would however like to present a different view as I know it.

Urea manufacture

In 1985 the National Fertilizer Secretariat (NFS) under the Ministry of Plan Implementation, was coordinating the fertilizer affairs of the country.

The coordinating committee on fertilizer met every month with Dr.Wickrema Weerasooriya, Secretary, Plan Implementation, Ranjan Wijeratne, Secretary Agriculture, R. S. Jayaratne Secretary Industries and many other responsible and knowledgeable persons participating.

The fertilizer manufacturing corporation was also represented in this committee. At these meetings urea manufacture and it costs was discussed very often and it was at one of these meetings that it was decided to stop urea manufacture.

The main reason why we had to stop the manufacture of urea was because by 1985, urea was manufactured worldwide from natural gas, which was a cheaper raw material than naphtha which we were using.

In fact we could import urea cheaper than manufacture it and the GOSL had to subsidize the local urea for it to be sold. This was the extent to which the GOSL went to protect the industry.

Phosphate Fertilizer Project

The Eppawela Rock Phosphate (ERP) deposit is unique mainly because it is fairly extensive and very rich in total Phosphorus (P2O5). However, the usefulness of this deposit as a source of fertilizer depends on whether its P2O5 is available to plants, either as a director application as rock phosphate or can be processed to a water soluble form using the conventional methods.Unfortunately ERP does not lend itself to be a good source of direct application nor can it be used to make water soluble phosphates using the conventional methods for reasons given below.

Rock Phosphates as Direct Application Fertilizer

The availability of P205 to plants from any applied rock phosphate is measured by its 'Citrate Solubility' (CS). Unfortunately the CS of ERP is very low. It is because of this reason that the TRI recommends the use of ERP only for mature tea.

The RRI recommends its use only for mature rubber and the CRI does not recommend it for coconut. Rock phosphates can be used for perennial crops because of its residual effects.

Water Soluble Phosphates as Fertilizer

Annual crops as rice and vegetables require a phosphate that is water soluble. The commonly used water soluble phosphate fertilizers are DAP, MAP, TSP and SSP. The manufacture of these water soluble phosphates from ERP is difficult because of the presence of impurities as iron and aluminium oxides.

Exploitation of the Deposit

It would be easier now to understand the problems associated with the exploitation of this deposit because we now know the nature of ERP. The GOSL called for tenders to manufacture water soluble phosphates mainly TSP and DAP using ERP. GOSL could not exploit this deposit without foreign collaboration because of three main reasons viz.

1. ERP is rich in iron and aluminum oxides as impurities and we did not have the technology to remove these impurities, to make the process economical.

2. The project had to be on a large scale to be economical and the volume of TSP produced could not be used by us but a bulk of it had to be exported. We did not have the infrastructure to market this.

3. We did not have the capital to invest on such a large venture.

The first time proposals for the exploitation of the deposit was called, there were many Indian and US companies that forwarded proposals. Finally a US company (I think it was IMC) was selected for final negotiations. These negotiations failed mainly because I understand that GOSL was not in a position to grant bank guarantees.

It was at this stage that I was requested by the then Chairman of the State Mining and Mineral Development Corporation (SMMDC), Mr. Ranatunga to evaluate these proposals again and to make recommendations as to how best we could exploit this deposit in the immediate future.

I made my evaluation of the proposals as best as I could and submitted these to the then Minister if Industries. My evaluation and report is available at the SMMDC and the Ministry of Industries.

I also submitted a proposal for the development of this deposit in the short term. By now proposals for the development of the deposit were invited for the second time. My proposal was that until a decision is made on the manufacture of TSP with foreign collaboration, immediate steps should be made to study the manufacture SSP and Partially Acidulated Phosphate Rock (PAPR). The SSP to satisfy our water soluble phosphate requirements and PAPR to satisfy our rock phosphate requirements. SSP is used to a very large extent in India and PAPR is manufactured and used in Israel very extensively.

If my proposal was given due consideration and my suggestion proved to be feasible, by now we would have been self sufficient in our entire phosphorus requirements for at least the last 15 years and saved millions of rupees in foreign exchange, used for the import of TSP and imported rock phosphate.

The apatite story would not be complete without the public knowing some facts about the second attempt made by GOSL to develop this deposit.

This time it went much further and an agreement was signed with IMC USA. However it was stopped because there were many clauses which were not favourable to the Government. To mention a few, the right to sell raw rock and the uncertainty of the impact on environmental pollution, were two very important problems on which agreement could not be reached.

(The writer was the Soils Chemist Rubber Research Institute, Director National Fertilizer Secretariat and a board member of Lanka Phosphates Ltd.)