NH3 And Seeding Season

After the ice North haul season had come to an end i spent two or three weeks back on hoppers topping up salt sheds around Calgary, and at that time they were still getting a fair amount of snow all be it the wet stuff, i was then asked if i wanted to go onto NH3 [anhydrous ammonia] [basically 82% nitrogen] when the season started in late April, and of course i said yes .

NH3 is a fertilizer that is put into the ground when the farmers are seeding ,it is transported and stored as a liquid and turns into a gas when not under pressure, it then will attach its self to any moisture and hold it in the ground

But first i needed to attend the training course that everybody has to attend each year it was a full days course and also took in a fatigue management course as this year we were going to be on a special permit which allowed us to drive for 12 and a half days insted of the normal 7 days or 70 hours this was only for NH3 drivers and had been requested by the Canadian fertilizer industry as the farmers needed this product 24/7

The course was good showing us how the tanks worked and how we loaded and unloaded this product it told us Wat would happen if we did not use our safety equipment and yes you would be dead it draws all the moisture out of anything , your skin your eyes ,they showed us a video of a steak which was freeze dried by spraying it with NH3 because when it turns from a liquid to a gas it is at -35 , and 1 liter of NH3 will absorb 850 liters of water nice product

But that's why we were trained and as long as you follow the instructions, and do things in order then we should be OK.

we then had a few days out on the road with trainers in the field this was good and showed us how to handle the pipes and valves on trailers and delivery tanks

Below is my set of B train trailers i put 14000kg in the lead trailer and 13000 in the rear [pup] and with that i would weigh approx 53600kg i could not put in my max due to being overweight on the bridge set of axles

Below are from right to left

orange liquid then the white pipe is the spray fill going to the yellow fill valve, next is the vapor yellow and finally the product pump driven from the truck in this case a jack shaft[pto]

the black pipe is the liquid pipe from the pup directly into the pump

unloading at Wakaw sk




below is a typical set up a farmer would use,
a very big tractor followed by the seed hopper which uses air to blow the seed down pipes to the cultivator followed by the NH3 trailer which also releases its gas into the ground via pipes also on the cultivator a one pass job