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2018 | Buch

Nitrogen Capture

The Growth of an International Industry (1900–1940)

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This monograph provides an account of how the synthetic nitrogen industry became the forerunner of the 20th-century chemical industry in Europe, the United States and Asia. Based on an earlier SpringerBrief by the same author, which focused on the period of World War I, it expands considerably on the international aspects of the development of the synthetic nitrogen industry in the decade and a half following the war, including the new technologies that rivalled the Haber-Bosch ammonia process. Travis describes the tremendous global impact of fixed nitrogen (as calcium cyanamide and ammonia), including the perceived strategic need for nitrogen (mainly for munitions), and, increasingly, its role in increasing crop yields, including in Italy under Mussolini, and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The author also reviews the situation in Imperial Japan, including the earliest adoption of the Italian Casale ammonia process, from 1923, and the role of fixed nitrogen in the industrialization of colonial Korea from the late 1920s. Chemists, historians of science and technology, and those interested in world fertilizer production and the development of chemical industry during the first four decades of the twentieth century will find this book of considerable value.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: Food or Famine
Abstract
In late Victorian times, the parliament of British science was the annual gathering of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1898, the president of that august body was the recently knighted chemist Sir William Crookes (1832–1919), famous for his work on thallium, cathode rays, and the radiometer. Other activities prior to 1898 included a study of rare earth elements, and the identification of helium on earth (it had first been observed on the sun). Crookes had started out as a skilful analyst who learnt his trade in the 1850s as assistant to the German chemist A(ugust) Wilhelm Hofmann (1818–1892) at the erstwhile Royal College of Chemistry in London. Crookes did not hold an academic post, nor did he possess formal qualifications in chemistry. Instead of pursuing academic studies in an ivory tower, his career was spent as a publicist for science, and himself, mainly as editor and proprietor of the journal Chemical News , and as discoverer, inventor, consultant, and expert witness in cases of litigation concerning scientific matters. Crookes during 1871–1880, among his other business activities, had been a director of the Native Guano Company, founded in London in 1869 to convert “unspeakable” (human) waste into fertilizer. He had, in addition, dabbled in theosophy, but seems to have been mainly forgiven this and other foibles. In any case, spiritualism and occult science were fashionable if dubious topics around 1900.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 2. Agricultural Chemistry
Abstract
Justus Liebig (1803–1873) is closely associated with promotion of the scientific development of agricultural chemistry. The career of this famous German chemist falls into two periods: before 1840 as organic chemist; and after 1840, in connection with agriculture. In 1825 at the University of Giessen he established a laboratory that served as a pharmaceutical-chemical institute. In 1831 he developed a method for the elemental analysis of organic substances, for which he gained considerable fame. Until 1835, most of his students qualified in pharmacy. Between 1839 and 1842, during which time enrolments increased considerably, his students intended to take up posts as either chemists in industry or as teachers, or they entered into government service (Fig. 2.1) [1]. It was at this time that Liebig turned to the application of science to agriculture and soon attracted to his laboratory students interested in food supply as well as medicine.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 3. The Quest for Fixed Nitrogen
Abstract
By the 1870s, chemists and agronomists recognized the important roles of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in plant growth. While the manufacture and supply of phosphorus and potassium fertilizers had been placed on a sound footing in Europe, this was not the case for products of nitrogen, the most important of the three elements essential to plant growth. Formerly the principal supply was animal excrement, from which was obtained potassium nitrate (saltpetre, or nitre), also employed in the manufacture of gunpowder and nitric acid. In Europe, where demand for nitrogen fertilizer was greatest, there were few products, apart from “manures,” in which the unreactive element was found in a combined state, for direct or indirect application.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 4. Ammonium Sulphate
Abstract
Throughout the period under review here, ammonium sulphate, because of its several sources, was the most important nitrogen fertilizer. The sulphate’s industrial origins ranged from coal-based processes—namely the coal gas and coke oven works—to production from calcium cyanamide and then synthetic ammonia. By the mid-1920s, ammonium sulphate made from the nitrogen capture processes had considerably reduced demand for Chilean nitrate.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 5. Electricity and the Chemical Industry
Abstract
Investigations into technologies for the direct capture of atmospheric nitrogen after 1900 were increasingly motivated by concerns over the depletion of caliche and the Chilean hold on the saltpetre monopoly. Estimates of how long reserves would last varied, from two decades to half a century, and in the case of lobbyists for the nitrate industry to over a century. Electrical methods for forming “nitrates,” which came to mean fixed nitrogen in any of its forms, as Crookes had emphasized, appeared to offer the way forward [1, 2].
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 6. The Direct Synthesis of Ammonia
Abstract
The market for fertilizers in industrialized countries expanded greatly after 1900. Artificial nitrogen products, if they could be manufactured at the right cost, offered the potential for substantial profits from the agricultural sector. The interest in nitrogen capture was especially strong at BASF, the leading dye manufacturer at the turn of the century. This interest had to do with overcoming Germany’s shortage of natural resources and its considerable dependence on imports from other countries. In the case of fixed nitrogen, there were concerns over not just British participation in the Chile saltpetre monopoly, and how long the supply of natural nitrate would last, but also external shocks such as economic and political events, including the outbreak of war. Moreover, nitrogen offered an opportunity for diversification at German firms away from dyes. To provide a clear picture of how BASF came to lead in nitrogen fixation developments in the early 1900s it is necessary to review the firm’s rise to a leading place in the realm of science-based industry.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 7. A Time of Guns and Grain
Abstract
The story still is told of a Minister, a member of the War Cabinet, who, finding the conversation at a certain dinner turning to the sinister menace of the submarine campaign, then at its height, and its effects especially on the Chile communications, turned to his neighbour with the enquiry: ‘Tell me, what is this nitrate they are all making such a fuss about?’
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 8. Wartime Expansion of the Nitrogen Industry
Abstract
The industry of atmospheric nitrogen has become a German industry, a world problem has been solved, and the most serious War danger of technical character had been prevented.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 9. Billingham: “The Synthetic”
Abstract
The President of the British Nitrogen and Carbide Company expressed the opinion that it was hardly probable that the Haber-Bosch process could be extended much outside Germany because the operation of its costly and complicated plants presumes a high technical capacity.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 10. Non-BASF Ammonia Technologies
Abstract
On 24 January 1927, Nikodem Caro, co-inventor with Adolph Frank of the calcium cyanamide process for the capture of atmospheric nitrogen, lectured in Berlin on the nitrogen industry. He was particularly scathing of those countries that, he claimed, after World War I used “chemists and engineers in uniform” and “stolen” Haber-Bosch synthetic ammonia patents to develop nitrogen capture industries outside Germany. He could give credit only to Georges Claude in France and Luigi Casale in Italy for original innovations in ammonia synthesis. The great proliferation of nitrogen factories, he remarked, “makes one think and raises questions” about those countries that had without doubt stolen the ammonia industry to satisfy their strategic ambitions: “And now one understands that in most cases these new factories do not spring from economic but from political necessity, the strategic need for independence in nitrogen requirements in agriculture and for production of munitions” [1]. This resonated with Humphrey’s scenario in July 1923, in which he foresaw the spread of nitrogen factories outside Germany’s borders unless BASF maintained its monopoly on synthetic ammonia. But in 1927, with new processes available, the situation was very different. Nevertheless the strategy of controlling synthetic nitrogen technologies approached the kind of oversight reserved for industries serving the military.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 11. The United States
Abstract
This laboratory has had most gifted and able directors. The fruits of its mellow years of activity have been of two kinds. First, the technical knowledge, data and designs, which have been made available are unsurpassed by any source in the world; and, furthermore, the skill and ingenuity of its staff have produced contributions to the field of pure science and of practical application, not exceeded by the research efforts of our largest corporations. Second, this laboratory has produced technical personnel and executives…who now have passed on to every fixed nitrogen plant in the United States and to some of our leading universities.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 12. New Ideologies and National Security in the 1920s
Abstract
Here we consider the way in which the nitrogen industry emerged during the 1920s in five reshaped or new European countries—Italy, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Poland—whose land and mineral resources and geographical bearings dictated industrial and security policies far more so than in the Western, generally more industrialized, maritime nations that bordered the Atlantic Ocean. This was particularly the case for the Austrian succession states after 1918. Created by the unification of two kingdoms in 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century encompassed much of central Europe and the Balkans: in the north Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Galicia; in the south Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; in the west Austria and the Trieste region; and in the east Transylvania and Bucovina.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 13. International Conferences, and an Adriatic Cruise
Abstract
The expansion of the post-war nitrogen industry had been fostered mainly by strategic concerns: economic nationalism and security in case of war. However, the accelerating trend towards large-scale production posed certain challenges that were less based on these concerns than on the markets and, in particular, the often slow uptake of novel fertilizers in agricultural sectors. Notwithstanding their rivalries, the European manufacturers established networks of communication for those engaged in what had become the globalized nitrogen business. The “First International Nitrogen Conference,” to discuss issues arising took place at Biarritz, France, in April 1926. Overproduction of nitrogen products and regulation of competition were high on the agenda. However, there was little agreement. Thus in 1927, IG Farben attempted to get ICI to hold back on expansion at Billingham, but Pollitt, passionately engaged with the new high-pressure technology, refused [1].
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 14. Synthetic Nitrogen in the Soviet Union
Abstract
…. I became interested in Russia professionally as it seemed the only country where any large scale chemical development was to be expected during the depression.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 15. Imperial Japan: From Cyanamide to Synthetic Ammonia
Abstract
Physical chemistry was introduced into Japan in the late nineteenth century by Sakuria Joji (1858–1936) at Tokyo Imperial University, and by the early 1900s had a strong following among Western-trained scholars [1, 2]. The leader among Japanese academics in nitrogen capture and the ammonia equilibrium was Tamaru Setsuro, who in 1913 introduced chemist Suzuki Tatsuji—from 1915 director of the Yokohama Chemical Research Laboratory—then in Germany to Fritz Haber. This was enough to convince Suzuki of the superiority of Haber’s method over other methods of nitrogen capture then in use—that is, cyanamide and electric arc processes.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 16. High-Pressure Synthesis and Later Developments
Abstract
The commercial development of high pressure synthesis has been largely ‘hydrogenation,’ whether of nitrogen to produce ammonia, or of carbon monoxide to produce methanol, or of various hydrocarbons to produce more valuable products. In this latter field, by high pressure synthesis, it is now possible for the first time to change or control the ratio of hydrogen to carbon atoms in any hydrocarbon, and even to change aliphatic compounds to naphthenic and aromatic bodies.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 17. Nobel Prizes and a New Technology
Abstract
The nitrogen capture story and the diversification that it spawned as told in the foregoing undoubtedly represents one of the pinnacles of human achievement. Despite the tremendous amount published on the subject it needs also to be read against a more general background. With this in mind, here and in the closing chapters we return briefly to some earlier themes, though mainly in the post-1918 period, and consider the diversity of certain social, political and economic conditions that impacted on the ways in which nitrogen technologies were taken up. We start with what many would call the ultimate accolade recognizing the success of nitrogen capture, the Nobel Prize.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 18. A Legacy of Synthetic Nitrogen
Abstract
The early synthetic ammonia industry became strongly associated with myths surrounding Fritz Haber’s personal role in enabling Germany to wage war through his involvement with nitrogen products. Today, this is still repeated as fact. More correctly, he was associated with the use of toxic chemicals in warfare. While he was an ambitious and arguably amoral servant of his country at war, and certainly an adept administrator, he was certainly no worse than those John Galbraith described as “mostly honest men whose public and private behaviour would withstand public scrutiny as well as most” [1].
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 19. Catching Up: Mainly Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union
Abstract
The synthetic nitrogen industry emerged mainly in Germany with the availability of novel furnaces, ovens, and autoclaves, improved knowledge of gas reactions, and the application of sophisticated engineering techniques to chemical processing. This and the need for fertilizers provided the stimulus for the development of heavy chemical industry at new locations, notably in Italy and Japan. In the historical literature, these nations are invariably portrayed as latecomers in industrialization. However, the fact often overlooked is that the involvement of Italy and Japan in hydro-electricity and nitrogen around 1900 established their chemical industries among the world leaders within a decade, and stimulated moves into high-pressure ammonia processes. As for the Soviet Union, despite the ravages of Stalinism and ideological battles, mainly framed in starkly personal terms, tremendous advances were made in industrialization by the 1930s, based on the need for artificial nitrogen products required in a highly politicised system of agriculture, with its mechanized collectives. These three countries, Italy, Japan and Russia, whose representatives and entrepreneurs were unable to gain access to BASF technology, or considered the cost extortionate, demonstrate how the late growth of their modern chemical industries was based on the global circulation of rival nitrogen technologies.
Anthony S. Travis
Chapter 20. Conclusion
Abstract
From 1918, BASF prevented access to the Haber-Bosch process and declined multiple requests for operating licenses. The clear preference for promoting its product, ammonium sulphate, rather than its technology, created a barrier that stimulated research elsewhere, based on the availability of cheap electrical power, the application of sophisticated engineering techniques equal to those of Germany, and alternative routes to pure hydrogen.
Anthony S. Travis
Correction to: Nitrogen Capture
Anthony S. Travis, Priyanka Das
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Nitrogen Capture
verfasst von
Dr. Anthony S. Travis
Copyright-Jahr
2018
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-68963-0
Print ISBN
978-3-319-68962-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68963-0

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