How it began
Fritz Haber, professor at the Technical University in Karlsruhe, carried out the essential research into the artificial production of ammonia and developed a laboratory process that he handed over to BASF, which applied for a patent on it. From 1908 a BASF team headed by Carl Bosch worked on realizing ammonia synthesis on an industrial scale. The task was accomplished in 1913, when the first ammonia synthesis plant went into operation at a newly built site at Oppau, north of Ludwigshafen.
Before it existed
Harvests had to increase significantly to keep pace with a growing population, but the natural deposits of nitrogenous fertilizer, above all Chile saltpeter, were in danger of being exhausted. This was known at the time as the nitrogen problem. Ammonia could not yet be made from the air at industrial scale.
How it works
The process binds nitrogen from the air to synthesize ammonia, the basic component of agricultural fertilizers, using a catalyst at extremely high pressures and temperatures. Scaling it up required reactors that could withstand those conditions. Bosch, drawing on his knowledge of metallurgy, designed high-pressure reactors that used different types of steel with different pressure and heat resistance.
What changed first
The Oppau plant was the first ammonia synthesis plant in the world, and after one year it was producing 40 tons of ammonia a day. Fertilizers could be produced industrially from then on. BASF became the first company to employ high-pressure technology, which introduced high-pressure catalysis to the chemical industry.
What lasted
The inexpensive production of mineral nitrogen fertilizer made it possible to raise agricultural yields significantly and gave rise to a new industrial branch built on high-pressure technology. Carl Bosch received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1931. BASF describes the work as a classic example of cooperation between academia and industry. According to BASF, the Haber-Bosch process still secures the food of billions of people. The German Patent and Trade Mark Office states that a large part of the world's population indirectly owes its food to it.
