NPK Fertilizer Production Technology
Type 1: NPK Blended Fertilizer Process for Compound Fertilizer Plant Design
Primarily, NPK blended fertilizer production line is a set of equipment and processes for BB fertilizer manufacturing. Besides, it usually includes crushing, batching, mixing and packaging steps.
If you are opening a new NPK fertilizer factory and have limited production experience, you can choose SX bulk blending fertilizer production line.
In fact, this technology is simple, and no drying or granulation processes. As a result, you needn’t purchase the relevant dryer or granulator. Accordingly, you can save a lot of money to prepare equipment. What’s more, in comparison to the other two techniques, its initial investment costs are relatively lowest.
For this, we offer several models for your actual production needs with the capacity of 5 t/h, 10-15 t/h, 20 t/h, 50-60 t/h, or 60-80 t/h. In addition, this NPK fertilizer production technology doesn’t take up too much workshop areas. Also, almost 500-3,000 ㎡ is enough.
Bulk Blended Fertilizer Line For NPK Mixtures
The core machine in this blending technique is rotary drum mixer. To provide our customer better production effect, we have two types: BB fertilizer mixer & drum type BB fertilizer mixer.
BB fertilizer mixer designed by our engineers is controlled by switches and can automatically feed, mix, and discharge without the need for manual assistance. Additionally, single blender’s footprint is small, only 10 ㎡. Also, its production capacity is 5-10 t/h, and the price is affordable, which is suitable for small-scale NPK mixed fertilizer production. If you want the larger output, you can purchase multiple BB fertilizer mixers for working simultaneously, and we will give you a 10% discount.
And we have another drum type BB fertilizer mixer, which is available for achieving continuous production and large scale NPK fertilizer production with the rehular capacity reaching 30-40 t/h. More importantly, our equipment can mix up to 300 tons of NPK blending fertilizers per hour.
This blending method doesn’t require chemical reactions during the NPK fertilizer production process. If you apply this technique, you should consider compatible NPK raw materials. Here are some examples of common ingredient combinations.
Then, by exact batching and blending several single element fertilizer or compound fertilizer in a certain proportion, you can get fertilizers with balanced nutrients.
Type 2: Dry Granulation Technique for NPK Fertilizer Manufacturing
Typically, dry granulation technology for NPK fertilizer production applies the extrusion method to make solid or powder materials agglomerate by external pressure. Besides, double roller extrusion is the most common method of producing NPK compounds.
NPK Fertilizer Granulation Production Line of Extrusion Technique
So why we suggest small and medium NPK fertilizer plant to try dry granulation technique? This is because the limited capacity of the extrusion granulator (about 2 t/h).
Firstly, this production process has relatively simple equipment with automatic performance, ensuring easy operation and maintenance. For example, after granulation, you can directly package the particles, reducing production costs.
Additionally, dry granulation is suitable for various powder or crystal materials with low water content, eliminating the need for a drying and cooling process. Thus, it not only saves on equipment investment and energy consumption but also reduces the possibility of caking granules and enhancing storage stability.
The extrusion technology is mainly used to produce compound fertilizer by means of the double roller extrusion granulator. It has won the praise of the majority of users since its launch! Firstly, our machine produces NPK granules at the room temperature without drying, which are formed at one time.
Also, although our roller press granulator has a production capacity of only 1-2 tons per hour, its price is reasonable, ranging from $2700 to $3600. Thus, and you can use several machines together to form a continuous NPK fertilizer granulation line. We’re having a sale, and buy now to enjoy more!
More importantly, we can customize the shape and size of the ball socket on the roller skin. Whether you’d like to produce NPK particles with a diameter of 3-10mm, such as spherical, claviform, elliptical, etc., our equipment can achieve what you want.
Dry granulation requires the raw materials with low humidity (less than 20%) and volatility in order to form particles through physical pressure without or with little water. Therefore, we find some ingredients suitable for direct NPK fertilizer dry granulation: granular ammonium sulfate, powdered superphosphate, solid potassium sulphate, etc.
Certainly, you can add some auxiliary materials to roller press granulator improve the granular effect. Besides, through appropriate treatment, you will utilize more NPK raw materials to pelletize.
And the entire dry granulation process also contains crushing, mixing, batching, and packing steps.
Type 3: Wet Granulation Technology for NPK Fertilizer Processing
As a matter of fact, wet granulation for NPK fertilizer manufacturing utilize the agglomeration method to make powdered materials squeezed into balls. Furthermore, this process needs by means of certain liquid phase (water, steam and binders). Hence, our plant develops two types of granulation: rotary drum granulation and disc granulation.
In wet granulation, main NPK materials are continuously fed into a rotating disc or drum. And you should spray water solution and adhesive to help form fine particles into NPK fertilizer pellets. What can you get from wet granulation technique?
Firstly, this process promotes the growth of particles, resulting in spherical shapes with a smooth surface. The wet raw materials reduce dust generation during NPK fertilizer processing.
Then, by adjusting wet granulator parameters, you can accurately control NPK fertilizer pellets’ shape and size. Besides, with higher output and efficiency compared to dry granulators, a single wet granulation machine can produce high to medium concentration compound fertilizers over 10 tons per hour.
In SX, we offers two types of wet granulators for your actual NPK fertilizer production needs. And you can choose whether to install water injector for real-time adjustment.
For one thing, if you want to mass produce NPK fertilizer pellets, you can choose a drum granulator. However, its price is a little higher, around $4000-$8000. This is because it has large volume, covering an area of approximately 10-50 ㎡. Besides, it has a large production capacity of 1-30 tons per hour and its granulation rate is 90%.
For another thing, our single disc granulator has a relatively cheap price and requires a small installation area. Moreover, its granulation rate can reach over 93%. There is a wide range of options to rely on your production, with a minimum of 20 kg/h and a maximum of 6 t/h. Under the same production capacity, the price of the disc granulator is two-thirds of that of the drum granulator, and the installation area is also about half, approximately 3-20 ㎡.
When selecting raw materials for making NPK fertilizers, it is necessary to consider the characteristics, such as fluidity, solubility, viscosity, etc., to meet wet granulation requirements. In general, urea, ammonium nitrate, MAP, DAP, and potassium sulfate are all easily soluble in water. Although potassium chloride has weak solubility, it can also be used for wet granulation. Besides, you can add other materials.
Besides, after drying, cooling, screening and packing processes, you can obtain NPK compound fertilizer products.
Top 3 Crushing Techniques in NPK Fertilizer Production
In NPK fertilizer production, crushing is an important process to break compound NPKs into smaller particles for better mixing and granulation. Thus, there are three common crushing techniques, which are urea grinding, cage grinding and chain grinding technology.
This technology can break larger urea pellets and convert into fine powders to facilitate subsequent mixing and granulation processes. Typically, this method usually uses the gap between the roller and the concave plate to grind and cut urea particles into 0.3-0.5 mm. When it comes to capacity, SXNS-80 can dispose 5-8 tons of raw materials per hour, with the inlet moisture of less than 5%.
Cage crushing technology is suitable for grinding soft and brittle materials, such as industrial furnace slag, shale, medium hard coal, etc. Also, it can play a role in mixing and crushing multiple raw materials at the same time. In fact, the cage crusher has loose requirement for the raw materials’ water content, generally within 12%. When it comes to capacity, SXLSF-800 can process 6-10 t/h materials with 0.2 mm in size.
The last technique is suitable for crushing blocky and hard objects into less than 3 mm in compound fertilizer production like phosphate rock, coal, limestone, etc. For instance, our engineer develops two types of chain crusher. One is single shaft vertical crusher with the capacity of 2-3 t/h and the cheap price of $900. Besides, another equipment has two shafts with the largest capacity in NPK fertilizer crushing of 10-15 t/h.
These crushing techniques have a significant impact on breaking down raw materials into the desired particle sizes for further processing in NPK fertilizer production.
Top 2 Batching Techniques for NPK Compounds Processing
When it comes to the batching technology in NPK fertilizer production, our company has designed dynamic and static batching machines to ensure that the ingredient-mixing process has an error of less than 0.01. Besides, both of these machines have unique characteristics and applicability.
How to Fomulate 15-15-15 NPK Compound Fertilizer?
Taking a common NPK fertilizer formula as an example. Firstly, the proportion of NPK is 15-15-15, which means that the content of 15% N, 15% P2O5 and 15% K2O. Here are some details of this formula.
- Urea (nitrogen content 46%): Adding about 32.6%.
- MAP (phosphorus content 61%): Adding about 24.6%.
- Potassium sulfate (potassium content 52%): Adding about 28.8%.
- Other fillers and trace elements: Adding about 14%.
In the actual batching process, an operator will add various raw materials to dynamic or static batching machine according to the corresponding NPK ratio of the specific formulas. Then, you can add the necessary auxiliary materials to meet the requirements of the finished fertilizers. Additionally, the advanced control system automatically calculates the amount of each NPK component and strictly monitors the ratio during the batching process. Thus, this ensures the accuracy of the NPK ratio of 15-15-15.
Of course, we will ask the customer in advance if they are considering an automatic feeding system to reduce human intervention. As a result, this high-precision batching technology makes the NPK fertilizer production process more reliable and efficient, meeting the needs of different industries, including professional users in agriculture, horticulture, and soil improvement.
How to Make The Best Ratio in NPK Fertilizer Production Process?
In most cases, NPK ratio (N:P2O5:K2O) is 1-1-1 (e.g.15:15:15 or 20:20:20) will provide all of the nutrients that all plants require for optimal growth. Besides, here are some formulas for NPK fertilizer prodution are as follows/
Besides, you can make the NPK mixtures ratio of 4-2-3 or 4-3-2 for full growth period of crops.
Fertilizer factory can raise phosphorus content, like 1-2-1 NPK fertilizer ratios.
You can increase potassium ratios to 1-1-2, 1-2-2, or 2-1-2.
NPK fertilizer factory need to achieve 2-1-1 or 3-1-1 fertilizer ratios.
If you want to make accurate compound NPKs proportion, you need more than one high-quality batching machine. However, if raw materials contain large pieces that are difficult to handle, like DAP or other phosphorus sources, you should crush them firstly.
