Haber-Bosch plants

Classical Haber-Bosch plant based on coke 80-90... 

After three years of delays the U.S. government finally contracted with the General Chemical Company to build the first modified Haber-Bosch plant U.S. Nitrate Plant No. 1 at Sheffield, Alabama. Only a single small unit was finished before the war ended, and many technical problems, above all rapid poisoning of a poor catalyst, prevented its successful operation. The first commercial synthesis of ammonia in the United States began in 1921 in a small plant (just 5,000 t N/year capacity) built by Atmospheric Nitrogen Corporation at Syracuse, New York the second plant, built by Mathieson Alkali Works, was completed at Niagara Falls a year later. ... 

The modem process for manufacturing nitric acid depends on the catalytic oxidation of NH3 over heated Pt to give NO in preference to other thermodynamically more favour products (p. 423). The reaction was first systematically studied in 1901 by W. Ostwald (Nobel Prize 1909) and by 1908 a commercial plant near Bochum. Germany, was producing 3 tonnes/day. However, significant expansion in production depended on the economical availability of synthetic ammonia by the Haber-Bosch process (p. 421). The reactions occurring, and the enthalpy changes per mole of N atoms at 25 C are ... 

Although ammonia condensation was already used in Haber s lab-scale ammonia plant and in early pilot plants of Bosch, the first commercial units of BASF used ammonia absorption in water to remove the product from the cool synthesis loop gas, because various technical problems were encountered with refrigeration at that time. It was only in 1926 that ammonia condensation was introduced in the Haber-Bosch... 

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