Haber process
The Haber process, also called the Haber–Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today. It is named after its inventors, the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed it in the first half of the 20th century. The process converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) by a reaction with hydrogen (H2) using a metal catalyst under high temperatures and pressures:
Before the development of the Haber process, ammonia had been difficult to produce on an industrial scale with early methods such as the Birkeland–Eyde process and Frank–Caro process all being highly inefficient.
Although the Haber process is mainly used to produce fertilizer today, during World War I it provided Germany with a source of ammonia for the production of explosives, compensating for the Allied trade blockade on Chilean saltpeter.
Throughout the 19th century the demand for nitrates and ammonia for use as fertilizers and industrial feedstocks had been steadily increasing. The main source was mining niter deposits. At the beginning of the 20th century it was being predicted that these reserves could not satisfy future demand and research into new potential sources of ammonia became more important. The obvious source was atmospheric nitrogen (N2), comprising nearly 80% of the air, however N2 is exceptionally stable and will not readily react with other chemicals. Converting N2 into ammonia posed a chemical challenge for chemists globally.
Haber, with his assistant Robert Le Rossignol, developed the high-pressure devices and catalysts needed to demonstrate the Haber process at laboratory scale. They demonstrated their process in the summer of 1909 by producing ammonia from air, drop by drop, at the rate of about 125 ml (4 US fl oz) per hour. The process was purchased by the German chemical company BASF, which assigned Carl Bosch the task of scaling up Haber's tabletop machine to industrial-level production. He succeeded in 1910. Haber and Bosch were later awarded Nobel prizes, in 1918 and 1931 respectively, for their work in overcoming the chemical and engineering problems of large-scale, continuous-flow, high-pressure technology.
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