Sheffield, Alabama

The first plant of this process erected in the United States was the U. S. Nitrate Plant No. i at Sheffield, Alabama. The imminence of war led to the passage in Congress of Section 124 of the National Defense Act of June 3, 1916. This. section made 20,000,000 available to the... 

The Ordnance Department built a plant at Perryville, Maryland, operated by the Atlas Powder Company, which produced 452,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate per day. Also, the two nitrogen fixation plants at Muscle Shoals and Sheffield, Alabama, were set up to fix nitrogen in the form of ammonium nitrate. 

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. ... 

Fraser Stoddart (Sheffield), Giovanni Andreetti (Parma), Wolfram Saenger (Berlin), David NacNicol (Glasgow), Eric Davies (Lancaster), Jerry Atwood (Alabama), Nary Truter (London), David Ollis (Sheffield), Bernard Langley (ICI Academic Relations). 

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