Nitrogen Capture Anthony S. Travis Nitrogen Capture The Growth of an International Industry (1900–1940) Anthony S. Travis Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel ISBN 978-3-319-68962-3 ISBN 978-3-319-68963-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68963-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957828 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018, corrected publication 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface The supply of food and its scientific relation to agriculture has a history going back to the 1840s, with the growth of studies into plant nutrition and soil fertility based on products containing the three major nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potas- sium. Unlike phosphorus and potassium, the availability of nitrogen products involved many challenges, geographical, political, economic and technological. This study is devoted mainly to the story of the industrial capture of atmospheric nitrogen and its transformation into stable compounds for use as fertilizers. The endeavour led to the most far-reaching development in industrial chemistry during the early twentieth century, the Haber–Bosch process, inaugurated in 1913 by BASF, a German firm endowed with superior technical capabilities. The process, drawing on a method devised by the academic chemist Fritz Haber in 1909 and developed into a manufacturing process by Carl Bosch and his team at BASF, used unprecedented brute force conditions—a combination of high pressure, a novel catalyst, and elevated temperature—to bring about the combination, or fixation, of the unreactive gas nitrogen with hydrogen, as ammonia. The Haber–Bosch process, at the peak of pre-World War I chemical technology, arose from a vast industrial research effort based on emerging technologies. The first processes, developed by 1910, drew on hydro-electric power to capture nitro- gen by using electric arcs, as an oxide, and by another electrothermal reaction as calcium cyanamide. The driving force in all cases was the need for self-sufficiency in nitrogen products, in particular to reduce the overwhelming reliance in Europe and the United States on Chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate, or “nitrates”) imported from South America. There was also the supposition that the mineral nitrate would be exhausted before the mid-twentieth century. Haber–Bosch synthetic ammonia was converted into the fertilizer ammonium sulphate. In marketing terms, success rested in large part on the fact that ammonium sulphate—from gas works, coke ovens and, more recently, Mond producer gas plants, and calcium cyanamide—was already familiar to farmers. Along with the nitrates, ammonium sulphate contributed towards ensuring food security for expanding populations. v vi Preface While compounds of nitrogen are essential as fertilizers, they are also required in the manufacture of explosives. This had tremendous implications after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Previously, the European nations that would become the Allies, or Entente Powers, and the opposing Central Powers were dependent on Chile saltpetre for both agriculture and production of the nitric acid required to produce explosive nitro compounds, such as TNT. For the Central Powers, the availability of the vital nitrate ceased following the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, when the British Royal Navy sent the Kaiser’s Far Eastern Squadron to the bottom of the Atlantic. The resulting nitrate shortage in Germany and the long stalemate on the Western Front from early 1915 stimulated technical improvement and massive expansion—with government support—of synthetic nitrogen processes for calcium cyanamide and ammonia, as well as major developments in the production from ammonia of nitric acid by catalytic oxidation. During the war, ammonium nitrate, for explosives, took precedence over ammonium sulphate. Nitrogen for explosives and fertilizers became a key sector in the emerging academic–industrial–military complexes that came into existence from late 1914, first in Germany and then in Britain; similar arrangements arose in France, Italy, and Japan and also from June 1916 in the United States. The Haber–Bosch high-pressure ammonia process came to the fore from mid-1916, mainly as a result of the Hindenburg programme of state-led industrial expansion. Following the Armistice in November 1918, the BASF ammonia process inaugu- rated a new era in industrial chemistry, with a global reach. This happened after BASF, in the belief that its process could not be imitated, refused to license the novel technology, except on terms that it dictated, none of which were acceptable. Research was encouraged outside Germany, based on wartime investigations, into rival high- pressure synthetic ammonia processes. By the early 1920s, the huge technical challenges were overcome in Italy and France, while soon after British investigators successfully imitated the German process. The new high-pressure ammonia technol- ogies were of immense significance for the growth of chemical industries in nations that had previously been left behind in the establishment of science-based industry based on coal. Hydro-electricity, for example, became important in the production by electrolysis of pure hydrogen, as well as a source of power. This, and coke-based processes for generating hydrogen, had significant implications following the reshaping of Europe in the aftermath of the war. In the geopolitical arena, synthetic ammonia was high among large-scale strategic self-sufficiency and state-sponsored programmes in Italy, Russia, and Japan—at the very time that the new high-pressure processes became widely available. As a result, the chemical industries of these nations, under the influences of fascism, communism and colonial modernization projects, began moving into the top ranks. Notwithstanding the widespread availabil- ity of high-pressure processes, extensive war-built calcium cyanamide factories were also available for peacetime fertilizer production. Calcium cyanamide remained significant, particularly in Italy and Japan, until the late 1930s. By then, there were new and urgent needs for nitrogen products. Here, I attempt to illustrate the impacts of various discoveries and inventions related to the supply of stable nitrogen products that contribute to the world food supply and the way in which the new processes fostered further applications. The Preface vii story almost neatly falls into place during three distinct periods of modern history: (1) pre-World War I, from around 1890, with the growth of the by-product coke industry, a source of ammonia, the development of electrochemical and electrother- mal processes, and studies at the frontier of scientific knowledge into gas reactions carried out at high pressures in the presence of catalysts, culminating with the introduction of the astonishing Haber–Bosch process of BASF; (2) World War I, 1914–1918, during which time military and civilian needs created the unprecedented growth of factories for the capture of atmospheric nitrogen; and (3) the inter-war years, two decades divided by the Wall Street crash of 1929, the first of which saw the emergence and global spread of rival high-pressure ammonia technologies, invari- ably to satisfy technological enthusiasm, if not momentum, as well as strategic needs, and the second of which witnessed the growing ambitions, with significant depen- dence on self-sufficiency in nitrogen requirements, of authoritarian states, notably the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan. From the perspective of industrial chemistry, the 1930s also featured the widespread introduction of techniques arising out of adapta- tions of the high-pressure ammonia process, including coal-to-oil conversion by hydrogenation, and research that led to the discovery of polythene and other novel materials when organic compounds were subjected to high pressures. The aim is thus to present a broad overview of the nitrogen industry, and where it led, until the late 1930s, by which time technical developments in ammonia