Word: nitrogenating
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More TNT or more food-more TNT or more nitrogenous fertilizers to make U.S. crops bumper? The answer to this tough wartime question seemed to be more TNT: Department of Agriculture scientists last week foresaw a 53% cut in nitrogenous fertilizers. Behind this possibility was the increased demand for nitrogen, source of both explosives and fertilizers. Though chemical plants now building will soon triple U.S. capacity to produce nitrogen from the air, TNT production is fast approaching 6,000 tons a day. But chemists and farmers have a partial substitute for fertilizer-nitrogen-fixing bacteria...
These useful germs, the only controllable source of agricultural nitrogen besides chemicals, are found in most good farm soils. They live in nodules on the roots of leguminous plants (peas, beans, alfalfa, clover), contribute twice as much nitrogen (33% of the return) to the soil as manures and chemical fertilizers together. But their natural activity can be artificially increased if more bacteria are mixed with legume seed and planted with it. This process is called soil inoculation. Farmers buy the inoculating bacteria in cans of moist humus or bottles of sugary jelly. Enough bacteria for an acre cost from...
...week feared that they might not be able to meet the rising demand. One reason: shortage of sauerkraut juice. This inspires bacteria to heroic feats of reproduction, so that they now multiply as much in one day as they formerly multiplied in a fortnight. But WPB, which has taken nitrogen from the farmers, allows sauerkraut makers no cans to ship their juices...
Postponed until the end of the war is development of the newest and most novel method of fertilizing with nitrogen: use of gaseous ammonia (NH3) - a discovery of Shell Chemical Co. The gas is allowed to escape from steel cylinders into irrigation waters, where it dissolves and is carried into every part of California or chards, rice fields, truck farms. These un usual amounts of quickly available nitrogen cause the plants to grow with startling speed. Ever since Shell's cautious introduction of this gaseous fertilizer, growers' demand for it has far exceeded the supply. But now Shell...
...carrying high-voltage current for seven miles from a Detroit Edison Co. power plant to nearby arms factories. Built by General Cable Corp., it is the longest gas-filled cable in the world: a steel pipe through which run three one-inch copper ropes, separately insulated and packed in nitrogen gas at a pressure of 200 lb. per sq. in. There are a few other such cables, the first of which was installed in the U.S. by General Electric for the Yonkers (N.Y.) Electric Light & Power Co. as a refinement on oil-filled cables introduced about 15 years ago. Advantages...