Abstract
Global food production increasingly relies on industrial chemical processes that are tightly coupled with energy consumption and large-scale infrastructure. Attempts to improve these systems often redistribute environmental burdens and economic risks rather than removing them entirely. This capstone project develops a conceptual design for a 3,000 metric ton per day urea production facility that uses natural gas as its primary feedstock, with the goal of evaluating how modern process engineering can deliver high output with improved efficiency and reduced emissions. Key design considerations include system integration, optimization of utilities, and reduction of greenhouse gas release within realistic industrial operating conditions. Alongside this technical work, the STS research paper investigates the broader societal and environmental implications of urea fertilizer production across global supply networks, with particular attention to how industrial growth affects labor conditions, environmental exposure, and economic control.
Both components of this project center on fertilizer production as an essential input to agriculture and as a system that redistributes both benefits and risks across different stakeholders. The engineering design addresses the challenge of producing urea at large scale while attempting to reduce energy usage and waste generation. Because urea synthesis depends heavily on fossil fuel–derived hydrogen, the process remains inherently energy intensive. The proposed design combines hydrogen generation, ammonia synthesis, and urea formation into a continuous, integrated system that uses improved catalysts and recycle loops to enhance efficiency and limit emissions. Results from the design indicate that such a facility can achieve strong economic performance while maintaining high material utilization and process effectiveness.
At the same time, the reliance on natural gas highlights the continued dependence on nonrenewable resources within fertilizer production. The STS analysis explores how expansion of this industry affects workers, surrounding communities, and environmental systems on a global scale. Using commodity chain analysis and comparative case studies of Indonesia and the United States, the research evaluates how differences in regulation, economic incentives, and industrial practices influence outcomes. Evidence suggests that although urea production plays a key role in supporting agricultural output and economic development, it also contributes to environmental degradation, occupational hazards, and unequal distribution of economic gains. These challenges are often intensified in developing regions with weaker regulatory systems, while even in highly regulated countries, cost-driven decision-making can still result in safety and environmental failures.
Overall, the findings indicate that the advantages of large-scale fertilizer production are unevenly shared, with corporations capturing significant profits while workers and local populations face greater exposure to risk. This raises important ethical questions about how critical agricultural technologies are designed and deployed. The STS paper concludes that while urea production is vital to maintaining global food supply, it also demonstrates how efficiency-focused technological systems can mask deeper social and environmental inequities. Considered together, the technical and social analyses show that fertilizer production operates within complex systems where improvements in efficiency may still shift costs onto less visible parts of society.
