In this study, controlled-release fertilizers (CRFs) with five different nitrogen release periods were pre- pared by coating large urea particles with polyethylene (PE) membranes under various experimental conditi...In this study, controlled-release fertilizers (CRFs) with five different nitrogen release periods were pre- pared by coating large urea particles with polyethylene (PE) membranes under various experimental conditions. The preliminary and differential solubility rates, release periods, and membrane pore sizes of the obtained CRFs were measured using water immersion, scanning electron microscopy, and mercury porosimetry. For all CRF samples, the median pore diameters of the membranes were equal to 4.5-5.3 nm and pores with sizes smaller than 10 nm accounted for 86-96% of the total pore surface area. The obtained pore diameter distributions differed for the five studied types of CRF, having release periods of 1,2, 4, 6, and 8 months. Thus, for the CRFs with a 1-month release period, the maximum pore diameter reached a magnitude of 4000 nm, while this value did not exceed 30 nm for the CRFs with a release period of 8 months. Hence, we have established a relationship between the release period of CRFs and their effective maximum pore sizes.展开更多
基金This work described above was financially supported by National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFD0200703), and the General Program of Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31572204). The authors would like to thank Hongying Cai from the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tsinghua Univer- sity for his help with SEM observations and Dongwu Chang from the Department of Thermal Energy Engineering of Tsinghua University for assistance with MP measurements.
文摘In this study, controlled-release fertilizers (CRFs) with five different nitrogen release periods were pre- pared by coating large urea particles with polyethylene (PE) membranes under various experimental conditions. The preliminary and differential solubility rates, release periods, and membrane pore sizes of the obtained CRFs were measured using water immersion, scanning electron microscopy, and mercury porosimetry. For all CRF samples, the median pore diameters of the membranes were equal to 4.5-5.3 nm and pores with sizes smaller than 10 nm accounted for 86-96% of the total pore surface area. The obtained pore diameter distributions differed for the five studied types of CRF, having release periods of 1,2, 4, 6, and 8 months. Thus, for the CRFs with a 1-month release period, the maximum pore diameter reached a magnitude of 4000 nm, while this value did not exceed 30 nm for the CRFs with a release period of 8 months. Hence, we have established a relationship between the release period of CRFs and their effective maximum pore sizes.