Brighter Planet's blog We’ve got a new offset project, and once
again it’s the first of it’s kind for Brighter Planet. The
Rentech Fertilizer Plant project supports a new N2O destruction
system at midwestern fertilizer plant, and is certified under
the Climate Action Reserve. Rentech’s fertilizer plant in East
Dubuque, Illinois produces nitric acid and ammonia, two of the
main ingredients in fertilizer. The plant used to release
Nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas about three hundred times
more powerful than CO2, as a byproduct of the nitric acid
production process. With this project the tail gas from nitric
acid production is piped through a special chamber where a
catalyst converts between 95% and 99% of the N2O into nitrogen
and oxygen. A continuous emissions monitoring system directly
measures the amount of N2O in the tail gas exiting the chamber
to ensure the catalyst is functioning effectively. This project
is the first of its kind in the United States and serves as an
example of how the fertilizer in