Oppau

As was Uie case in Oppau, Germany, in 1921, everyone with firstliand knowledge of the disaster was killed on the site, leaving tlie cause of the incident unknown. It is reasoned tliat a structural weakness in one of the tanks caused the gas leak, although the liquefied gas was not under any pressure. The tanks were only 3 years old when tlie accident occurred and certainly were not expected to... 

Many of the pre-teclmological-era accidents, such as tliose in Chicago (1871). Joluistown (1889), and Oppau (1921), were exacerbated by poor plamiing and construction. These accidents often resulted in the tightening of safety controls. 

Oppau Disaster. An expin which occurred in Oppau, Ger, on Sept 21, 1921, killing 509 people, injuring 1917, and causing enormous property damage. The catastrophe was caused hv the use of HE to break up a hard mass of fertilizer consisting of a mixt of AN and Amm sulfate. This method had always been practiced at Oppau because it was believed at that time that AN could not be detond unless a combustible material was aiso present, and, in fact, about 20000 charges of HE had been previously used in a similar manner without incident... 

The Oppau disaster led to an extensive examination of the expl. properties of AN and it was decided that it can be expld, although with difficulty, when the material is under strong confinement and is heated or initiated with sufficiently strong force... 

The catalyst was reformulated by Alwin Mittasch, who synthesized some 2500 different catalysts and performed more than 6500 tests. They arrived at a triply promoted catalyst consisting of a fused iron catalyst, with AI2O3 and CaO as structural promoters and potassium as an electronic promoter. The process was first commercialized by BASF, with the first plant located in Oppau in Germany producing 30 tons per day in 1913. The plant initially produced ammonium sulfate fertilizer, but when the First World War broke out it was redesigned to produce nitrates for ammunition. The plant was expanded and in 1915 it produced the equivalent of 230 tons ammonium per day. 

Developed by IG Farbenindustrie and first installed at Oppau, Germany, in 1913. Subsequently, widely used worldwide. 

Sachsse Also called the Flame cracking process, and the Sachsse-Bartholome process. A process for making acetylene by the partial combustion of methane. The product gases are quenched rapidly and the acetylene is extracted with methyl pyrrolidone. First operated by IG Farbenindustrie at Oppau, Germany, in 1942. Worldwide, 13 plants used the process, of which 7 were still in operation in 1991. 

Research at I.G. Farben at that time was conducted in five large research laboratories.Inorganic chemistry was the primary research area at Bitterfeld under L. Pistor, while pigments and pharmaceuticals were studied at Leverkusen under C. Duisberg and at Hoechst under E. Schmidt. Research of ammoniacal fertilizers was conducted at Oppau under A. Mittasch. The fifth laboratory was the central laboratory in Ludwigschafen, headed by Meyer. 

Karl Bosch (1874-1940) and Alwin Mittasch (1869-1953) of Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik eliminated the nitrate shortage that occurred after the British sea blockade effectively cut off the nitrate supply from Chile. By May of 1915, they had successfully developed at their Oppau Plant an industrial-scale process for oxidizing ammonia. Their process converted the large quantities of synthetic ammonia produced by the Haber process to nitric acid and other nitrates that were essential for fertilizers and explosives. (10)... 

Germany s synthetic petroleum industry never reached these goals, but production increased dramatically under the Four Year Plan. In 1933, only three small synthetic petroleum plants (Ludwigshafen-Oppau, Leuna, Ruhrchemie-Sterkrade-Holten) were operating, the last a Fischer-Tropsch plant. At that time, Germany s petroleum consumption was about one-half of Great Britain s, one-fourth of Russia s, and one-twentieth that of the... 

An Oppau, Germany nitrate plant exploded killing over 600 people. This was probably the worst ever chemical explosion up to 1984. 

Preparation from propyl alcohol developed during WWII by.IGFarbenindnstrie at Oppau, Germany (the so-called Oppau Process")... 

Poly(isobutylene) (PIB) is the earliest polyolefin that has been produced on a technical scale. A German patent was filed in 1931 (1), which was eventually published in 1937. Other patents followed (2). In 1938 PIB was marketed as Oppanol B by BASF. Oppau is a district of Ludwigshafen (3). 

Until the time of the Oppau disaster (1921), AN was not considered to be an explosive. This disaster called for more extensive research into its properties, and numerous works were published as a result of such investigations (Refs 15a 15b). However, the findings of the various investigators were somewhat at variance. While some claimed that AN itself cannot be detonared unless it. is strongly confined and a very... 

The sensitivity of AN to initiation by heat may be increased or decreased by the presence of certain inorganic impurities. For instance, small amts of Cu increase sensitivity to heat because of the formation of a small amt of copper nitrite, which causes instability (Ref 90). The formation of Cu nitrite also was reported in Mellor, v 7 (Ref 16). Mellor also reports that the presence of Fe, Al or especially Zn in powdered form lowers the temperature required for the decompn of AN. Kast (Ref 31) reported that the presence of KMn04 in powdered form may cause the spontaneous heating of AN. Investigations conducted at Pic Arsn showed that different Cr compds such as the oxide and nitrate catalyze the decompn of AN, and in some cases explosions occurred at temps as low as 200°. Among the inorganic substances which lessen the sensitivity of AN to heat are clay, kiesel-guhr, powdered limestone etc. The same effect was expected of Amm sulfate until the disaster at Oppau in 1921 (Refs 15a 15b) rendered the safety of such a mixt uncertain. Amm sulfate had been used for many years as a desensitizer for AN in fertilizers and it was considered that such mixts could not be... 

The largest catastrophe in the history of the chemical industry took place in September, 1921, at Oppau, where a partial detonation of about 4000 tons of a double salt, composed of more or less equal amounts of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate occurred. The cause of this explosion has never been fully explained. Most likely it was brought about by attempts to break up the agglomerated double salt by means of an explosive. Approximately 1000 men were killed in the Oppau explosion. 

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