what are common uses for nitrogen
Nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, diatomic and generally inert gas at standard temperature and pressure. At atmospheric pressure, nitrogen is liquid between 63 K and 77 K. Liquids colder than this are considerably more expensive to make than liquid nitrogen is. Nitrogen is used to produce ammonia (Haber process) and fertilizers, vital for current food production methods. It is also used to manufacture nitric acid (Ostwald process). In enhanced oil recovery, high pressure nitrogen is used to force crude oil that would otherwise not be recovered out of oil wells. Nitrogen's inert qualities find use in the chemical and petroleum industries to blanket storage tanks with an inert layer of gas. Liquid nitrogen is used as a refrigerant.