A is for …. AdBlue®

Over the next few months were going to be publishing a complete guide to this mysterious liquid and how it will affect you, your car and your wallet/ can there’s no better place to start than with the letter……A

A is for (obviously) AdBlue®

Over the coming weeks we’re going to be giving you a complete A-Z rundown of this mysterious liquid they call AdBlue® and there’s no better place to start than with the letter …..A

AdBlue® is not Blue.

It is a colourless liquid.

AdBlue® is not made from pigs wee.

However, AdBlue® IS made up of a synthetic reproduction of a very common liquid ‘Urea’, the main nitrogen-containing substance in the urine of mammals.

Urea was the first ever organic compound to be synthetically formulated.

Way back in 1773, Hilaire Marin Rouelle a French chemist isolated the crystalline substance and six years later (why it took so long I don’t know) Antoine François de Fourcroy and Louis Nicolas Vauquelin came up with the name ‘Urea’.

It was some time later in 1828, when German chemist Friedrich Wöhler heated a solution consisting of a mixture of silver cyanate (AgOCN) and ammonium chloride (NH4Cl).

This formed ammonium cyanate, a substance that when heated more became a clear, colourless crystalline urea which has the same characteristics as urinary urea.

Fast-forward to today

The commercial production of synthetic urea now involves the reaction of ammonia and carbon dioxide under high pressure (approximately 150 atm) and at high temperature (approximately180°C).

The product, ammonium carbamate (CO2NH4NH2), is then dehydrated to produce urea (Carey 1992; Myers 2007). A summary reaction is shown below:

2NH3 + CO2 —–> CO2NH4NH2 —–> CO(NH2)2 + H2O

Many thanks to www.cropsreview.com for the technical information

Stay tuned for more information on AdBlue®. If you’re looking for the best quality AdBlue® visit our AdBlue® online shop