The Haber Process

Hi! This web site is a first year project of mine designed to give you a brief guide to the Haber Process by looking at:

Brief history on how the Haber process was discovered
Obtaining the raw materials
Study of the reaction, looking at conditions and Le Chateliers principle
Employing a catalyst
Uses of Ammonia

If you would like to contact me, and please feel free to do so as any feed back would be greatly appreciated then my email address is: cha01rc@shef.ac.uk

A reaction column where the main reaction occurs in the Haber Process, reactants are fed into the top and products removed from the base of the column

(Picture used from www.aue.auc.dk)

Brief history on how the Haber process was discovered

When World War One started in 1914 the production of explosives was obviously very important to both the axes and the allies. As the allies started to advance on to Germany they cut off all of their supply routes, preventing the delivery of such substances as Sodium nitrate and Potassium nitrate. Both of these substances were of great importance to the production of explosives as they were a source of Nitrogen. As these became unavailable it forced the Germans into developing a technique where by they could obtain Nitrogen from the resources that they had.

Due to this cut off the German scientist Fritz Haber developed a process to produce ammonia by combining Nitrogen, N₂, and Hydrogen, H₂ both of which are readily available substances.

For more information about explosives, past and present, click here:
Explosives

All sources used within this site are recognised with links to the relative pages from which the image was used. They are all used for a purely educational purpose with the assistance in constructing this site as part of a university project.

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