This concise brief describes how the demands of World War I, often referred to as the Chemists' War, led to the rapid emergence of a new key industry based on fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. Then, as now, nitrogen products, including nitric acid, and nitrates, were essential for both fertilizers and in the manufacture of modern explosives. During the first decade of the twentieth century, this stimulated research into and application of novel processes. This book illustrates how from late 1914 the relations and developments in the first modern military-industrial complex enabled the great capital expenditures and technological advances that accelerated massive expansion, particularly of the BASF Haber-Bosch high-pressure process, that determined the direction of the post-war chemical industry. .

This concise brief describes how the demands of World War I, often referred to as the Chemists’ War, led to the rapid emergence of a new key industry based on fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. Then, as now, nitrogen products, including nitric acid, and nitrates, were essential for both fertilizers and in the manufacture of modern explosives. During the first decade of the twentieth century, this stimulated research into and application of novel processes. This book illustrates how from late 1914 the relations and developments in the first modern military-industrial complex enabled the great capital expenditures and technological advances that accelerated massive expansion, particularly of the BASF Haber-Bosch high-pressure process, that determined the direction of the post-war chemical industry.

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.

Industrial products that are made from, or contain, nitrogen are described in parts of some encyclopedias and standard reference works. However it is not always simple to determine from these varied sources the present status of the technology and markets for various nitrogen products. We therefore perceived a need for a text that provides a comprehensive description of: 1) products that are made from or that contain nitrogen; 2) the processes that produce these products; and 3) the markets that consume these products. I have attempted to present the material in a standardized format that should make this book easy to use and helpful to the readers. The standard format for each product is: Introduction, Process, Production, and Uses, with some variations in different chapters. This book provides information that could be used by a wide range of readers: Fertilizer companies—to evaluate different production processes and review general trends in the market. Basic chemical companies—to evaluate different production processes and review general trends in the market. Specialty chemical companies—to investigate new chemical production and/or sales opportunities and the processes that could make those sales a possibility. Chemical distributors—to obtain a feel for the general market size for some chemicals and the basic handling and distribution procedures for various chemicals. Engineering Companies—to evaluate different production processes and review general trends in the market. Engineering and Chemistry Students—to learn more about practical applications of the principals that they have experienced in their classrooms and laboratories.

A realistic yet encouraging look at how society can change in ways that will allow us to feed an expanding global population. This book addresses the question of how we can best feed the ten billion or so people who will likely inhabit the Earth by the middle of the twenty-first century. He asks whether human ingenuity can produce enough food to support healthy and vigorous lives for all these people without irreparably damaging the integrity of the biosphere. What makes this book different from other books on the world food situation is its consideration of the complete food cycle, from agriculture to post-harvest losses and processing to eating and discarding. Taking a scientific approach, Smil espouses neither the catastrophic view that widespread starvation is imminent nor the cornucopian view that welcomes large population increases as the source of endless human inventiveness. He shows how we can make more effective use of current resources and suggests that if we increase farming efficiency, reduce waste, and transform our diets, future needs may not be as great as we anticipate. Smil's message is that the prospects may not be as bright as we would like, but the outlook is hardly disheartening. Although inaction, late action, or misplaced emphasis may bring future troubles, we have the tools to steer a more efficient course. There are no insurmountable biophysical reasons we cannot feed humanity in the decades to come while easing the burden that modern agriculture puts on the biosphere.

During the First World War, the need to secure a domestic supply of nitrate compounds necessary to the manufacture of explosives caused the federal government to undertake an extensive program of research and development of industrial nitrogen fixation processes. These government activities were to have far-reaching consequences for the development of the American chemical industry. At the outbreak of the war, Congress passed legislation appropriating $20,000,000 for the construction of plants which would produce nitrates for wartime use. Extensive study and review by various government agencies of currently available industrial nitrogen fixation processes led to the decision to build a synthetic ammonia plant using an experimental process developed by the General Chemical Company. The construction of a second plant was later authorized to use the process of the American Cyanamid Company. These two plants were. constructed near Florence, Alabama, and were completed just as the war ended. Three research facilities were established durinq the war by the Army Nitrate Abstract approved: aie1) P. Jones Division, at Laurel Hill, New York, at Sheffield, Alabama and at Arlington Farms, Virginia. These three experiment stations did industrial research aimed at improving the synthetic ammonia process at Plant #1, and succeeded in making a number of significant modifications in that process before the plants and these laboratories were closed at the war's end. While Congress argued about the disposition of these plants, the War Department established the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. to perfect the synthetic ammonia process, and to find a peacetime use for the product of the cyanamid plant. This laboratory operated until 1926. Although congressional battles prevented the plants from benefiting from the Laboratory's research during its existence, that research was of major importance to the American fixed nitrogen industry. Due to the wartime research done on its process, the General Chemical Company was able to become the largest producer of ammonia in the United States within a few years. An improved ammonia synthesis catalyst was developed by the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, and a large body of data on all aspects of the ammonia synthesis reaction was collected which was then used in the following decade for theorectical studies of catalytic action. The Laboratory served as a training school for industrial chemists, and as a model for the kind of project-oriented team research which has since characterized industrial research activity. Thus, rather than serving only to provide an assured supply of explosives; as had been intended, the fixed nitrogen activities of the government proved to have their greatest effect in the improvement of the American nitrogen fixation industry, and the economic growth of the country.