Reading Haber Process

Haber op. cit. (11), p.3. Papers on boiler plants appeared from time to time in the publications of the Society of Chemical Industry. For example, a Mr. B. A. Oldham read a paper on Carbon dioxide recorders and their application in boiler efficiency control at a meeting in Manchester (Society of Chemical Industry. Review, III (1920), 144). Llewellyn Jones and Frederic I. Scard, in the second edition of their book The Manufacture of Sugar Cane (London Duckworth Co., 1921, first edition 1909), included a chapter on the Scientific control of the factory which was largely concerned with techniques for minimizing the energy used in the refining process, and paid close attention to the efficiency of the boilers. 

Dudley, Read and Walker [475, 123] have reported a novel rhodium(I)-catalyzed oxidation of 1-olefins. Hexene-1, heptene-1 and octene-1 were converted to the corresponding methyl ketones with dioxygen at ambient temperature and pressure in benzene solutions of the complexes [RhH(CO)(PPh3)3] and [RhCl(PPh3)3]. Methyl ketones are not normally produced in Haber-Weiss initiated radical reactions. Furthermore, radical inhibitors such as hydroquinone or 2,6-di-/-butyl-p-cresol do not retard methyl ketone formation. Since these authors are unable to detect radical chain processes, they suggest that reactions involve co-oxygenation of coordinated PPh3 and olefin at the metal center, equation (283). 

The history of modern ammonia production started in Germany just after 1900, when Fritz Haber and his assistants developed the process concept which is the basis for all ammonia production even today. Haber patented his work in two famous patents, the circulation patent [47] and the high pressure patent [48]. The claims of the patents read ... 

Haber s third key patent for ammonia synthesis—No. 238450 filed on September 14, 1909, and issued on September 28, 1911, in Haber s, not BASF s, name, and generally known as the high-pressure patent—stressed the catalysis under pressure and high temperature. Its claim read Process for production of ammonia from its elements using catalysis under pressure and elevated temperature, whose characteristic is that the synthesis takes place under very high pressure of about 100 atm, but to be useful at 150-250 atm or higher. 

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