ELI5- DEF/AdBlue – how chemists create artificial urea ?

Question

Hi,

Learnt that my Diesel car is equipped with a DEF/AdBlue circuit to reduce the NOx emission.

That product is water with artificial urea.

To create artificial urea, industry needs to know the molecule definition.

So, chemists start from some organic samples but these samples are different, with various compositions, various oxidation levels…

How do chemists proceed to reduce the organic urea to a definition of a pure urea molecule ?

(I guess the process is more or less the same for every “reduction”)

Thanks !

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave was the first to discovered urea in urine. The German scientist Friedrich Wöhler was the first to synthesize it from inorganic compounds.