Haber-Bosch procedure

The industrial production of ammonia from N2 and H2 by the Haber-Bosch procedure is a high energy consumption process. Due to the volume reduction... 

The confrontations regarding the BASF s Merseburg ammonia plant, later the Leuna-Werke, came just when the industry power struggle was being decided in favor of Big Chemistry. The cyanamide industry obviously wanted to get a piece of the permanently increased amount desired by the military. However, it could not refute the suspicion that its ammonia was unsuitable for the production of nitric acid. Indeed, the inferiority of the cyanamide industry s process, which was only suspected before April 1916, received confirmation in other areas as well. First, the operating conditions in the Reichsstickstoffwerke were "defectively established," as it was put, so that the available electrical power was not fully consumed. Second, and decisive for wartime, the process required twelve times as many workers as the Haber-Bosch procedure to produce the same amount of nitrogen. With the news of this factor, at the latest, the cyanamide industry, BASF s last serious competitor, fell out of the race. BASF and the other Dreibund partners now dominated the production of nitrogen compounds. 

Although a lot of technology progress has been achieved, the basic principles and process in modern ammonia plants are essentially the same as original ones developed by Haber and Bosch, a century ago. The major procedures can be outlined as follows ... 

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