The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that kill million and dress the continent of Europe on the path to further calamity two decades later . But it did n’t amount out of nowhere . With the centennial of the outbreak of hostility coming up in 2014 , Erik Sass will be face back at the track - up to the warfare , when seemingly venial second of clash accumulated until the billet was quick to explode . He ’ll be cover those case 100 year after they occurred . This is the 84th installment in the series .
17 April 2025: Germany’s Lifeline, the Haber-Bosch Process
Saltpeter , the fighting ingredient in gunpowder , is really a chemical group of chemically similar compounds such as atomic number 19 nitrate and sodium nitrate , whose vulgar component can be venture from their names : atomic number 7 . Until the early twentieth century these nitrate chemical compound , which are also fundamental ingredients in fertilizer , could only be find in big amounts in natural deposition , the large of which were ground in South America . But on the eve of the Great War , German chemists key out a way to synthesise nitrates artificially – a momentous achievement that allowed Germany to fight on for four longsighted years after its oversea root of nitrate were cut off by the British encirclement .
At first glimpse it might seem easy to find nitrogen , since it is a very common element , induce up just over 78 % of the Earth ’s atmosphere . But even though it ’s in the air we breathe , atmospherical N is so unchanging when bonded to itself in a “ diatomic ” state ( N2 ) that it just wo n’t react with other chemicals under average condition – in little , you ca n’t do anything with it because there ’s no manner to get it out of the airwave . And that was how it stayed until German scientists , armed with the resources of the world ’s most advanced industrial state , applied themselves to the problem .
By the spell of the 20th 100 Germany was the unchallenged world loss leader in the new chemical and pharmaceutic manufacture industry , the legacy of Prussia ’s other tip in industrial production of dyes . Not coincidentally , Germany also guide Europe in electricity product , which fuel the new industries . These factors converged in 1909 , when the German chemist Fritz Haber visualise out how to “ fix ” atmospheric nitrogen using magnanimous amounts of energy under very high force per unit area .
By raising the pressure to around 200 atmospheres , boosting the temperature to 450 degrees Celsius , and using iron as a catalyst , Haber was able to spark a reaction in which one corpuscle of atmospheric nitrogen ( N2 ) split and recombined with three mote of atmospherical hydrogen ( 3 H2 ) to form two molecules of ammonia ( 2 NH3 ) . Then , using a disjoined process develop by Wilhelm Ostwald in 1902 , the ammonia water could be converted to nitric acid ( HNO3 ) , which can in turn be used to raise nitrate compounds .
Executives from BASF immediately apprehend the huge potential of the discovery when Haber demonstrated the process for making ammonia them in 1909 : aside from the whole munition egress , the Haber summons stood to revolutionize fertilizer manufacture and make Department of Agriculture more productive . toy for mellow stakes , BASF went all in , wagering its fiscal future on the invention .
Making a Lot of the Ammonia You Buy Better
After buy the expression from Haber , BASF turned to another pharmacist , Carl Bosch , to enter out how to get down bring on ammonium hydroxide from atmospheric nitrogen on an industrial scale . After four long time of work ( and a very substantial investment in facility and equipment , include high - press , high - temperature blast furnace ) on September 9 , 1913 , a BASF flora in Oppau , Germany , began producing ammonia at the rate of several tons per day , increase to 20 tons per day by the following year . During the war the German governance frantically scale up capability to an awesome 500,000 gross ton of ammonia water per twelvemonth , although factual production was only about half this .
While the Haber - Bosch Process lengthen the Great War by enabling Germany to fight on , its benefits for humanity are undeniable . Currently it is estimated that about half the protein in our body is made up of atomic number 7 sterilize using the Haber - Bosch Process , while one third of the planet ’s universe depends for most of its nourishment on food grown using artificial fertilizers produced with the process . Haber and Bosch both finally received Nobel prizes for their body of work ( Haber in 1918 , Bosch in 1931 ) .
Of naturally , even when intended for a good purpose , nitrates can be improbably severe : on September 21 , 1921 a giant burst even a expectant part of the Oppau plant ( pictured above , after the detonation ) , toss off 600 people and leaving a monolithic volcanic crater on the website .
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