ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Frank–Caro process

The frank-caro process is a way of making nitrate fertilizers which are used to help plants grow big and strong. It all starts with a mineral called nitrate rock which is dug up from the ground.

Now imagine you have a big bag of colorful candy which you want to give to your friends. But before you can do that, you need to open the bag and sort the candy by color. The frank-caro process does a similar thing with the nitrate rock. It breaks down the rock into different parts to make it easier to use.

First, the nitrate rock is crushed into small pieces and mixed with two other chemicals, sulfuric acid and water. These chemicals react and turn the nitrate rock into a liquid form called nitric acid.

Think of it like making lemonade with lemons, sugar, and water. You mix all the ingredients together and get a lemonade drink. The frank-caro process is a bit like that but instead of lemons, sugar, and water, we use nitrate rock, sulfuric acid, and water to make nitric acid.

Once we have the nitric acid, we go through another step called absorption. This means we soak the nitric acid into some kind of material to remove any impurities. Think of it like soaking a dirty dish in soapy water to clean it.

Finally, we boil the clean nitric acid to remove any excess water. This leaves us with a white powder called ammonium nitrate which is the type of fertilizer that farmers use to grow crops.

So in summary, the frank-caro process is a way of turning nitrate rock into ammonium nitrate fertilizer by mixing it with sulfuric acid and water to make nitric acid, absorbing it to remove impurities, and boiling it to get the fertilizer powder.