Green Fertilizer, Commitment to a Sustainable Environment, DifferenceMakers

Team members working on their project's prototype in a lab setting.

“Green Fertilizer technology aims to solve the problem of food insecurity in developing countries, like Uganda.”

“Green Fertilizer technology aims to solve the problem of food insecurity in developing countries, like Uganda.”

Countries that are facing food insecurity issues world-wide are seeing these consequences in some cases due to stream-lined issues with fertilization and waste. Farmers in developing nations don’t have enough fertilizer to grow food for their rapidly increasing populations, and in turn millions of people are malnourished. Green Fertilizer is a team consisting of Samuel Alpert, a graduate in energy engineering, Benard Tabu, and Visal Veng, Ph.D. students in energy engineering and they are passionate about solving this world-wide issue with food insecurity.

Through their proposed project, water can be turned into fertilizer via plasma synthesis in the form of nitrates. This will help to reduce waste and runoff during transportation as well as planting, and in turn also reduce the number of emissions and pollution from the farming process. The system would replace the conventional fertilizer growing process, using solar energy to store and have resources safely available on demand. This team was the recipient of the $4,000 Commitment to a Sustainable Environment award, which will in turn be used to further their prototyping process as well as their research efforts toward creating the most feasible solution possible.