What is the haber-bosch process?
Sometimes it is called the most important technological progress in the 20th century, the haber-bosch process enables economic synthesis of ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen and hydrogen. It was developed a little before the First World War Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who were German chemists. Haber won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918 for his discoveries and Bosch shared the Nobel Prize with Friedrich Bergie in 1931 for his work on high -pressure chemical reactions. German National Secrets Initially, chemistry and techniques with an effective ammonia synthesis spread to the rest of the world during the 20th and 30 years.
Ammonia is important because it is the primary component in artificial fertilizers without which modern agricultural yields would not be impossible. The Haber-Bosch process was sometimes called the HABER process, it was the first industrial chemical process to take advantage of extremely high pressures: 200-400 atmosphere. In addition to high pressures, this process also uses a high temperature of about 750 ° -1 200 ° Fahrenheit (about 400 ° -650 ° Celsius).The efficiency of the reaction is the function of pressure and temperature; Larger yields are produced at higher pressures and lower temperatures to the necessary extent.
History
During the first decade of the 20th century, the artificial nitrate synthesis was examined due to the concerns that the world's fixed nitrogen supply decreases quickly due to demand. Nitrogen in its inactive form of atmospheric gas is very abundant, but the farm useful "solid" nitrogen compounds were harder at the time. Agricultural operations require a liberal amount of fixed nitrogen to produce good returns. At the beginning of the 20th century, all countries in the world were required to accumulate nitrates from the largest available source - Salpteter (Nano3) from Chile - and many scientists were afraid of decreasing supply of nitrogen compounds.
TheHABER-BOSCH process provided a solution to the lack of solid nitrogen. Using extremely high pressures and catalyst composed mainly of iron, kriTical chemicals used in the production of fertilizers and explosives were very accessible to Germany, which allowed this country to continue fighting in the First World War I., because the Haber-Bosch process, which was in the global use of branches, has become the primary procedure for the production of chemical fertilizers.