Brunner, Mond and

John Watts, The First Fifty Years of Bmnner Mond and Company (Winnington Brunner Mond and Company, 1923), 52-54. 

ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). Formed in 1926 by the amalgamation of four major chemical companies, including British Dyestuffs (Kollewe and Wearden, 2007). Two of the other organizations, Brunner Mond and United Alkali, already produced alkalis used as basic components for many chemical processes, particularly washing and dyeing textiles. The last of the four companies, Nobel Industries was founded by Alfred Nobel (of the Nobel Peace Prize) and manufactured explosives. 

Ammonia or its salts are employed in a variety of ways in many trades. From it nitric acid, the vital necessity for the manufacture of all high explosives, can be made it is an essential for the Brunner Mond or Solvay ammonia soda process for the production of alkali in the liquid form it is employed all over the world in refrigerating machinery, but its enormous and increasing use is in agfriculture, where, in the form of sulphate of ammonia, it constitutes one of, if not the most important chemical manures known to man. During the year 1916 350,000 tons of ammonium sulphate were produced in this country, the larger proportion of which was consumed in agriculture—a proportion likely to increase and not diminish if the demand for home production of food continues. 

Watts, J.I., The First Fifty Years of Brunner, Mond Co., Brunner, Mond, Winnington, UK, 1923, 18. Hardie, D.W.E and Pratt, J.D., A History of the Modern British Chemical Industry, Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK, 1966, 85. 

In 1918, the British government started work on a plant at Billingham in Yorkshire this plant was purchased in 1919 by Mond and Brunner, who developed the process and laid the foundations for the huge ICI complex at Billingham. Ammonia production began at Billingham in 1924. 

Their suitability had been particularly appreciated from 1907 by Brunner Mond whose chief chemist and then research manager at its Winnington plant in Cheshire, Francis Freeth, assiduously and snobbishly collected promising men from Oxford and made Winnington into a notable research department in... 

Some years before the formation of ICI in 1926, Brunner, Mond s chief chemist, F.A. Freeth, had also argued the necessity for abstract and theoretical work as a basis for new products. This research philosophy led to close contacts between the company and academic institutions, with scientists being sent around the world to gain expertise in new techniques. 

The paper by Dr. W. J. Clark of ICI Billingham provides a useful history in the use of instruments at the new plants then being built at Billingham. Brunner Mond had built a plant for ammonia synthesis (the so called No. 2 plant) which started operation in 1923 and a larger plant was built between 1925 and 1927. 6 According to a report written by Dr. R. E. Slade, in 1925, (and quoted by Clark) the No. 2 plant at... 

Through the technical expertise of Brunner Mond s research workers and plant managers, the production of ammonium nitrate was raised from around 1000 tons (1016 tonnes) per year, to an output of over 200,000 tons (203,200 tonnes) between and 1915 and 1918. 

The consequences of this were soon appreciated in Britain and in the following year, 1926, amalgamation of Brunner Mond, United Alkali... 

Ernest Solvay (Rebecq-Rognon, Brabant, i6 April 1838-Brussels, 26 May 192 ) patented his process in 1863 (BP 3131/11 December 1863) for the apparatus, the principal feature being the vertical carbonator, and started a works near Charleroi in 1865, the soda being shown in the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Ludwig Mond and John Brunner began to work the process in 1873 Northwich, Cheshire. Roscoe was instrumental in the adoption of H. Y. Castner s electrolytic process in Oldbury in 1892. ... 

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