Ammonia Synthesis for War

on the one hand, BASF faced seriously declining revenues due to the loss of its traditional markets, but, on the other hand, it had the capacity to convert its ammonia output into nitrates, the commodity in critical demand by the country s military. Here is clearly one of the origins of a phenomenon that marked so much of Germany s, and the world s, subsequent history the rise of a military-industrial complex.For BASF and the Second Reich this was a natural partnership the country s leading company looking for new markets, a state at war desperately needing 

The commitment to commercial operation without the benefit of any existing pilot plant process was yet another calculated gamble on Bosch s part. Although the company already had a suitable catalyst to replace scarce and expensive platinum, new contact chambers of unprecedented size had to be built, and all the valves, pumps, coolers, and pipes had to be fashioned for the first time from a newly developed chromium-nickel stainless steel, which at that time could not be produced in large pieces. But by using soda from the Solvay process, Oppau could produce NaNOs and eliminate the country s dependence on Chilean nitrates.  

As with Oppau, there was a big difference between the initially planned capacity (31,700 t N/year) and the eventual size of the plant. In December 1916 the decision was made to more than quadruple the annual production to 130,000 t N/year. In spite of mounting wartime difficulties and material shortages, the construction proceeded rapidly, and the first converter was turned on on April 27, 1917, just eleven months after construction began. The first ammonia was produced two days later.  

Ammonia plant in Leuna in a painting by Otto Bollhagen (1920). Courtesy of BASF Unternehmensarchiv, Ludwigshafen, Germany. 

But the admirably rapid German commercialization of Haber-Bosch synthesis was not followed by a similarly rapid conquest of the world fertilizer market. Synthesis of ammonia from its elements did not become the dominant means of providing fixed nitrogen for agriculture until almost two decades after Oppan s startup, nor did the commercial availability of the process lead to a rapid increase in average applications of nitrogen fertilizers during the first half of the twentieth centnry. 

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