OPPapers.com

Haber Process

World situation
At the beginning of the 20th century, nitrates were in high demand for both agricultural fertilisers and for nitric acid which is used mainly for explosive production. However at this time the only source of nitrates for the production of these entities was from natural deposits such as that available in Chile, where the guano (bird droppings which contained fish whose muscles decompose into nitrates) are located, 1.5m high and 350 km long. As world population increased, so did the use of fertilizers. Using fertilizer with high nitrogen content provided a good crop yield. This caused some scientists in the 19th century to begin to worry about the depletion of the sources of nitrogen for chemical fertilizer.
At the beginning of the 20th century Europe's growing population had created a demand for an increase in agricultural production. Nitrates, used in industrial fertilizer, required ammonia for their manufacture. However, there was a shortage of naturally occurring, nitrogen-rich fertilisers, and so as a result of this there was much research into how ammonia could be produced from atmospheric nitrogen.
These conditions prompted the German Chemist Fritz Haber, to develop the industrial synthesis of ammonia by combining the nitrogen in the air with hydrogen to form ammonia.
Haber and chemistry/technicalities of process
Prior to WWII Haber had demonstrated how nitrogen and hydrogen could be combined to form ammonia. However yield was too small to be economically viable despite the experiment using 1000°C and a catalyst. This formed an extremely inefficient and unusable experimental design. Following much frustration many scientists identified that Haber had failed to consider the pressure of the gases in his experimental design. This instigated Haber to conduct a full investigation into the production process. He also considered the effects of temperature, pressure and catalyst in an attempt to make the process much more economically viable....