HABER PROCESS

Haber Process

Haber Process

Introduction

The Haber process also called the Haber Bosch process that is used to act in response with gaseous nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia. This process is of great importance at the industrial level, as is most often used for ammonia in large quantities. The Haber process was developed by the German chemist Fritz Haber and marketed in 1910 by Carlo Bosch. Both were Nobel laureates in chemistry for their important contributions to science and industry.

In the early years of the twentieth century, there was a high demand for ammonia for use in the synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. The ammonia obtained naturally from guano reserves in Chile, were insufficient to meet this demand. For this reason, many scientists who study how to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen environment until she found the solution Haber and Bosch devised a way to synthesize ammonia on a large scale.

Nitrogen is a very abundant element in the atmosphere, the air around us is composed of 78% nitrogen. The difficulty of combining with hydrogen to form ammonia is that the N 2 molecule is very stable, thanks to triple bonds, and is chemically rather inert. The reaction gets done with acceptable performance under high pressure and temperature, and mediating a catalyst of iron, potassium and aluminium oxides. The reaction that occurs in the Haber process is as follows:

N 2 (g) + 3H 2 (g) <-> 2 NH 3 (g)

Discussion and Analysis

The Haber process is carried out through a chain reaction; this reaction is exothermic, that is heat is released in the process. The hydrogen used in this process is obtained from natural gas or methane, which do react with water vapours in the presence of catalysts such as nickel oxide. The produced hydrogen is passed through the beds of iron oxide, while nitrogen from the atmosphere (Haynes, 1954, 105). To accelerate the reaction, is increased pressure (500 atmospheres) and temperature rises to about 500 ° C. When an exothermic reaction, one might think that raising the temperature decreases the yield of the reaction, and indeed it is, but in return, the greatly increased production speed, and for this reason that the process is carried out in these conditions.

To further accelerate the process condenses the ammonia formed, and removed from the camera. Thus, the equilibrium shifts to the right, accelerating product. The yield of the reaction in these conditions is 15 or 20%, but the gases that have not reacted to form ammonia, are reprocessed, repeatedly, thus obtaining a recovery of 98%. Currently most of the ammonia produced at the industrial level using this process (Smith, 1998, 413). The ammonia produced is mostly used in the synthesis of fertilizers, which led to over 100 million tons of fertilizer a year.

History

The atmosphere is composed of 78.1% nitrogen gas; it is chemically very reactive because the atoms that compose it are linked by a covalent triple. While nitrogen is essential for the growth of living beings, all plants, all animals and all humans are unable to ...