Brazil’s energy giant Petrobras has signed a cooperation agreement with the country’s agricultural research organisation Embrapa to develop low-carbon products, including biofuels and fertilizers.

This partnership requires Petrobras to devise technological solutions and develop biofuel and bioproduct production plants, said Petrobras in a statement.

“Regarding the fertilizer sector, the goal is to stimulate the development of new products and put them on the agribusiness market; among those, we can mention new urea-based fertilizers with higher added value, mixed fertilizers, fertilizers with distinctive granulometry, and new sustainable inputs that have a lower environmental impact.”

Silvia Massruhá, Embrapa’s president (LEFT), visited the Petrobras Research Center and was welcomed by the executive manager, Maiza Goulart.

In August, Petrobras announced that it would be restarting its mothballed nitrogen facility at Araucária Nitrogenados S.A. (ANSA) in Araucária, Paraná, with an investment of R$870 million ( USD 150 million ). The aim is to produce urea, ARLA 32 (diesel emissions reduction fluid) and ammonia by the first half of 2025.

Araucária Nitrogenados has a production capacity of urea of 640,000 metric tonnes/year and 440,000 metric tonnes/year of ammonia.

Petrobras announced in August that it would be restarting its nitrogen fertilizer facility at Araucária Nitrogenados SA (ANSA) in the state of Paraná. The urea and ammonia plants were mothballed in 2020.

More from New AG International on Brazilian agriculture:

Blazing a bio trail

Brazil has been hailed as a market leader in the adoption of products, especially when it comes to using microbes for abiotic stress and biocontrol on row crops. The history of Brazil using nitrogen-fixation products, known as inoculants, in agriculture dates to the 1960s. Regulation and standards were not far behind. So how has this early regulatory scene helped to set the foundation for the biologicals market we see today in Brazil and what’s coming next?

Brazilian technology uses biological fertilization to restructure soils

A Brazilian company in the bio-inputs sector has been standing out with its “Microgeo” biological fertilization technology. It is a balanced component that nourishes, regulates and maintains the continuous production of biological fertilizer through a process called continuous liquid composting (CLC). Leonardo Gottems writes.

2BMonthly exclusive interview with Silvia Massruhá, President of Embrapa, July 2023 (subscription required)Silvia Massruhá, President of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) was named as Embrapa’s first female president in May 2023.

Source:New AG