Catalytic ammonia synthesis (Haber)
Síntesis catalítica del amoníaco a partir de nitrógeno e hidrógeno
- Date
- 1909 · confidence high
- Place
- Karlsruhe, Germany
- Credited to
- Fritz Haber (with Robert Le Rossignol); scaled up industrially by Carl Bosch (BASF)
- People
- 👤 Fritz Haber1868–1934
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Haber demonstrates in the laboratory that atmospheric nitrogen can be fixed as ammonia using a catalyst at high pressure and temperature, applying Le Chatelier's principle. It is the chemical reaction that has most influenced the human population.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1918 (Haber) and 1931 (Bosch). Listed here as a chemical discovery; the industrial process belongs among inventions.
What it led to
- Nitrogen fertilisers and the Green Revolution
- Synthetic explosives
- High-pressure chemical engineering
- Industrial heterogeneous catalysis
Built on
- Water-gas shift reaction1780
- Le Chatelier's principle1884
- Nernst's thermodynamics
- iron catalysts (Mittasch)
Made possible
- Haber-Bosch process1909–1913
- large-scale Ostwald nitric acid