Chapter 276 Synthetic Ammonia
After watching the tank show, Arthur met Fritz Haber from Germany a few days later.
Speaking of Haber's name, people who are not very concerned about the chemical industry may feel unfamiliar.
But if you mention the synthetic ammonia technology, it must be much more well-known.
Haber was born in a Jewish family in Breslau, Silesia, Germany, and is a famous German chemist.
Because he successfully produced ammonia from the air last year, that is, in 1909, he won the Victoria Chemistry Award at the end of 1909, and received Arthur's personal invitation to come to the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society in Australasia to work.
The predecessor of the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society was the Royal Physical Research Society, and its chief president was Einstein.
The reason for establishing the Physical and Chemical Research Society is naturally to attract top physical and chemical talents from Europe and even all over the world.
So far, Arthur's investment in the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society has exceeded 10 million Australian dollars, and the achievements he has made are indeed not small.
Many famous physicists and chemists, including Einstein and Haber, were personally invited by Arthur to come to the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society to work.
They only need to change their nationality to Australasia to get an annual salary of at least 5,000 Australian dollars, plus a research fund of at least 50,000 Australian dollars per person per year.
In addition to these, all state-owned laboratories and materials in Australasia, as well as laboratories and some equipment in universities, are all provided to members of the Royal Physical Chemistry Research Society for free use.
In a nutshell, as long as you become a member of the Royal Physical Chemistry Research Society, the research funds will be paid by the research society, and you will also be paid a high salary, and even your family's food, clothing, housing and transportation will be arranged.
This is a good blessing for some scientific workers who love scientific research but are short of money. It is precisely because of these conditions that the Royal Physical Chemistry Research Society of Australia has attracted more than 20 members, all of whom are famous physical and chemical researchers from Europe and the United States. They are all famous experts with certain scientific research results and recognized abilities.
Hubble's reputation in later generations is actually not very good, because Hubble served as the director of a chemical arsenal in World War I, responsible for the development and production of chlorine, mustard gas and other poisonous gases, and used them in the war, causing nearly one million casualties.
This inhumane act was condemned by scientists from many countries including the United States, Britain, and France, and caused Haber's reputation to plummet in the scientific research community.
But these did not hinder Haber's talent in chemistry at all. The synthetic ammonia technology he developed was also very important at the national level.
Of course, when it comes to synthetic ammonia technology, we have to mention the importance of ammonia.
Ammonia is a colorless gas with a strong pungent smell. Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, which is easily soluble in water and is an important raw material for making nitric acid fertilizers and explosives.
The reason why synthetic ammonia technology is very important is that we have to mention saltpeter, an important mineral for making gunpowder and agricultural fertilizers.
Because it can make gunpowder and is also an important source of agricultural fertilizers, the importance of saltpeter mines is unparalleled and is controlled by very few countries.
The world's largest saltpeter mine currently comes from the Pampas Desert in Chile. Even in later generations, it is still the world's largest saltpeter mining area and saltpeter export area.
Several countries around this saltpeter mine fought a war with Chile, but it was eventually successfully acquired by Chile.
With the support of the British, Chile successfully became one of the top three countries in South America, but the price was that the saltpeter mine was firmly occupied by the British, and the mining and sales of the saltpeter mine were basically decided by the British.
The British Empire's monopoly on saltpeter mines led to dissatisfaction in many other countries. There is no way. Saltpeter mines are very important for military industry and agriculture. Even if they cannot get a share of the saltpeter mines occupied by the British, they must find something to replace saltpeter mines to solve the raw materials for making gunpowder and fertilizers.
Among the many substitutes for saltpeter mines, ammonia is definitely one of the most important substitutes.
As early as 1795, someone tried to synthesize ammonia under normal atmospheric pressure, but it failed in the end. Then, someone tried to test it under multiple different atmospheric pressure environments, but the result was still failure.
This situation did not make some progress until the second half of the 19th century. The great progress in physics and chemistry has made people realize that the reaction of synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen is reversible. Increasing pressure will push the reaction in the direction of producing ammonia: increasing temperature will move the reaction in the opposite direction, but too low a temperature will make the reaction rate too slow; the catalyst will have an important influence on the reaction. This actually provides theoretical guidance for the experiment of synthesizing ammonia.
At that time, the authority of physical chemistry, German Nernst, clearly pointed out that nitrogen and hydrogen can synthesize ammonia under high pressure conditions, and provided some experimental data.
French chemist Le Chateli was the first to try to conduct an experiment on synthesizing ammonia under high pressure, but because oxygen was mixed into the nitrogen-hydrogen mixture, it caused an explosion, so he gave up this dangerous experiment. Haber, who had a good foundation in physical chemistry research, was determined to overcome this daunting problem.
Haber first conducted a series of experiments to explore the best physical and chemical conditions for synthesizing ammonia.
In the experiment, some of the data he obtained were different from those of Nernst. He did not blindly follow authority, but relied on experiments to verify, and finally confirmed that Nernst's calculations were wrong.
With the assistance of a British student, Loseno, Haber successfully designed a set of equipment suitable for high-pressure experiments and a process flow for synthesizing ammonia. The process is: by blowing water vapor above the red-hot coke, a mixed gas of almost equal volumes of carbon monoxide and hydrogen can be obtained.
The carbon monoxide in it further reacts with water vapor under the action of a catalyst to obtain carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Then the mixed gas is dissolved in water under a certain pressure, and the carbon dioxide is absorbed to produce relatively pure hydrogen.
Similarly, water vapor is mixed with an appropriate amount of air and passed through red-hot charcoal. The oxygen and carbon in the air will generate carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and be absorbed and removed, thereby obtaining the required nitrogen.
Ammonia is synthesized from a mixed gas of nitrogen and hydrogen under high temperature and high pressure conditions and the action of a catalyst.
But what kind of high temperature and high pressure conditions are the best? What kind of catalyst is the best? This still requires great efforts to explore.
With perseverance, after continuous experiments and calculations, Haber finally achieved inspiring results in 1909.
That is, under the conditions of 600℃ high temperature, 200 atmospheres and osmium as catalyst, synthetic ammonia with a yield of about 8% can be obtained. The conversion rate of 8% is not high, and of course it will affect the economic benefits of production.
Haber knew that the synthetic ammonia reaction could not achieve a conversion rate as high as that of sulfuric acid production. In sulfuric acid production, the conversion rate of sulfur dioxide oxidation reaction is almost close to 100%. What to do? Haber believed that if the reaction gas could be circulated under high pressure and the ammonia generated by the reaction could be continuously separated from this cycle, the process would be feasible. So he successfully designed a circulation process for raw gas. This is the Haber process for synthetic ammonia.
After the birth of synthetic ammonia technology, Haber's name became famous throughout the European chemical community.
After successfully obtaining the patent for the Haber process for synthetic ammonia, Haber also received the news that he had won the Victorian Chemistry Award that year.
In order to get his process out of the laboratory and officially carry out industrial production, Haber made a decisive decision and decided to accept Arthur's invitation to work at the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society in Australasia.
Of course, what really attracted Haber, in addition to a series of conditions from the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research, was that Arthur also promised that as long as Haber was willing to hand over his process to Australasia, Australasia would do its best to quickly realize industrial production of Haber's industrial process, build a synthetic ammonia plant and officially put it into production within five years.
At that time, the profits would be shared with Haber, and Haber would be invited to serve as the chief vice president of the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research.
The reason why Arthur was confident that he could build a formal synthetic ammonia plant was that in the original history, Haber's idea of synthetic ammonia was officially realized in 1913, and a synthetic ammonia plant with a daily output of 30 tons was built and put into production at that time.
The time involved was only about three years at most, and in history, Haber only handed it over to the largest chemical company in Germany.
Arthur didn't believe that he could still lag behind a chemical company with the efforts of the whole country?
On the second day after Harber arrived, Arthur announced the appointment of Harber as vice president of the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research, and under the joint witness of Harber and Kent's housekeeper, announced that the royal consortium would invest one million Australian dollars to build a synthetic ammonia plant using the Harber process.
Harber funded his own synthetic ammonia process, accounting for 40% of the shares, and the royal consortium controlled by Arthur invested 1 million Australian dollars, accounting for 60% of the shares.
The site of the synthetic ammonia plant is located in the Leonora Industrial Base. The construction of the plant is not difficult, but the specific equipment and methods for the industrial production of synthetic ammonia technology have to wait for Harber and a series of members of the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research to study.
Arthur made a promise that as long as the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research can solve the production of synthetic ammonia, the royal family will give the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research one million Australian dollars in research funds, and give all members an additional reward of 20,000 Australian dollars each.
The one million Australian dollars of research funds will be divided equally among the more than 20 experts of the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research, and each person can get tens of thousands of Australian dollars.
In addition, as long as the production technology of synthetic ammonia can be solved, all members will receive an additional reward of 20,000 Australian dollars, which is their salary for four years. No one will refuse it.
You know, the salary of the members of the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society of Australasia is definitely not small, which is basically at the upper-middle level in Europe.
In addition, Arthur is generous and will reward as long as there are major research results. Therefore, the actual income of these members is even higher than that of most European experts. In addition, there are free trial laboratories and annual fixed research funds. This is why experts are willing to change their nationality and come to Australasia.
After handing over the problem of industrial production of synthetic ammonia to the Royal Physical and Chemical Research Society and letting Haber pay attention to the construction of synthetic ammonia plants, Arthur was relieved.
In fact, in addition to synthetic ammonia, Australasia currently attaches great importance to chemical industry.
Several new chemical plants in the Leonora Industrial Base have basically enjoyed the strong support of Australasia for the chemical industry.
In addition to additional tax benefits, the royal consortium and the government also provide double loans to these chemical industries to ensure that the chemical industry has sufficient funds for development.
At present, the tax paid by general industry is about 11%, while the tax paid by the chemical industry is only 8%.
In addition, these chemical plants can occasionally get free help from members of the Royal Society for Physical and Chemical Research. Of course, if there is sufficient funds, these members can be directly hired as consultants.
In addition to these, the Australian government has also provided greater support to the chemical engineering majors of various universities.
Not only has the number of students enrolled in chemical engineering increased, but also more tuition and other miscellaneous fees for college students who apply for chemical engineering majors have been reduced, and there are more scholarships and benefits, in order to cultivate more talents for the chemical industry.
At present, the most powerful chemical industry should be the National University of Australia and the University of Auckland.
The chemical engineering major of the National University of Australia currently enrolls up to 400 students each year, and the chemical engineering major of the University of Auckland enrolls 200 students each year.
In addition to the chemical engineering majors of other universities, large or small, the chemical industry in Australia can also train at least 700 college students each year, which can make up for the problem of insufficient talents in the chemical industry.
Of course, as far as the top talents in chemistry are concerned, Australia currently has no way to train them by itself, and can only rely on hiring from Europe and the United States.
Of course, most of the time, they are hired from Europe. After all, education in Europe is already very popular, and all kinds of talents are also very rich, so it is easier to attract them.
Countries like the United States, although the economy is already very developed, are not as popular in education as Europe.
Even the reason why the United States rose in later generations was because it attracted a large number of European talents during World War I and World War II.
Now if you want to attract talents from the United States, first of all, these talents are highly valued by the US government, and secondly, the talents of these talents may not be comparable to those of Europe.
With the current good relationship between Australasia and Germany, it is relatively easy for Australasia to invite some chemical experts from Germany.
So far, Australasia has hired more than 40 famous experts from Europe, and the more talented ones among them have basically entered the Royal Institute of Physical and Chemical Research.
The remaining little-known talents have basically entered the chemical engineering majors of major universities under Arthur's arrangement, and cultivated more backbone talents in the chemical industry in Australasia.
Although the chemical industry is both beneficial and harmful to human society, after all, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, and it is also very important for the development of the country.
Under the various measures to develop the chemical industry in Australasia, major chemical industry factories have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and talents in the chemical industry are gradually accumulating.
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