34 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS — SECTION B. 



tons per annum of synthetic ammonia for the immediate purpose 

 of producing about 60,000 tons per annum of ammonium nitrate, 

 but with the ultimate post-war object of making other ammonium 

 compounds. After some two years' work, a team of ardent re- 

 search chemists in the Munitions Inventions Department, including 

 the late Dr. H. C. Greenwood, whose death about a year ago is so 

 much to be deplored, had succeeded in reproducing the Haber pro- 

 cess for the synthesis of ammonia on a large laboratory scale. The 

 results which they had obtained were so promising that Mr. 

 Quinaii decided to adopt the Haber process for the new factory. 

 For war purposes, about half the ammonia so produced was to be 

 oxidized by means of the Kiihlmann catalytic process to nitric acid, 

 and the latter was then to be neutralized with the balance of th© 

 ammonia. Although the designs were partly completed, various 

 causes, notably the necessity to concentrate on the manufacture of 

 poisOTis, prevented rapid progress from being made with the fac- 

 tciry itself; and, when the Armistice was signed, all work on it was 

 suspended. The project has, however, since been taken over by 

 a syndicat-e formed by Bruuner. Mond, and Co., and it is to be 

 hoped that, as a measure of national safety, it will be carried to 

 completion. 



The history of the Haber process affords one of the most strik- 

 ing illustrations of the truth, that the most far-reaching dis- 

 coveries in the domain of applied science are often the result 

 of research, carried out not with a definite technical aim, but 

 solely from a deeire to advance knowledge. The conditions of 

 equilibrium between nitrogen, hydrogen, and ammoniai possess very 

 considerable physico-chemical interest; but in the early stages of 

 Haber's researches thereon, commencing in 1905, it would have 

 been difficult to find any chemical reaction which looked less likely 

 to become of technical importance than the direct synthesis of 

 ammonia from its elements. Even under high pressure and with 

 the most active catalysts so far discovered, tbe temperature has 

 to be pushed so high to obtain a sufficient rate of reaction that 

 equilibrium is reached when only comparatively small fractions 

 of che hydrogen and nitrogen have combined. The suggestion that 

 this unpromising reaction might be utilized for tue manufacture of 

 ammonia on a large scale was first made by Le Rossignol, a native 

 of Jersey, who had been trained in Sir William Ramsay's labTira- 

 tory in London, and had subsequently gone to work with Haber. 

 Le Rossignol's proposal was to circulate the gases continuously 

 under pressure through the catalyst furnace, a heat exchanger, 

 an ammonia absorber, and again through the lieat exchanger to 

 the furnace. To test this suggestion, a small laboratory plant 

 was constructed by Haber and Le Rossignol, the working of which 

 was so satisfactory that in 1909 the invention was taken over by 

 the Badische Anilin-und Sodafabrik. The difficulties in the way 

 of constructing and running a large scale plant to work at about 



