Submitted by job314 on Fri, 12/30/2016 - 15:16
Two Lehigh undergraduates, Criztel Navizaga and Jennifer Boecker, led the effort to evaluate phase and spectroscopic properties of urea phosphate solutions for sustainable nitrogen management. Nitrogen management is one of the 14 National Academy of Engineering challenges and we are addressing it by synthesizing urea fertilizers in the form of molecular adducts with inorganic acids. For the first time Raman spectroscopy revealed that even in aqueous solutions urea is coordinated to acid molecules.