Abstract
The Haber-Bosch process, which converts hydrogen and nitrogen to ammonia, could be one of the most important industrial chemical reactions ever developed. The process made ammonia fertilizer widely available, helping cause a world population boom as yields from agriculture increased rapidly in a short time. Globally, ammonia production plants made 157.3 million metric tons (t) of the compound in 2010, according to the Institute for Industrial Productivity’s Industrial Efficiency Technology Database. Between 75 and 90% of this ammonia goes toward making fertilizer, and about 50% of the world’s food production relies on ammonia fertilizer. The rest of the ammonia helps make pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles, explosives, and other chemicals. Almost every synthetic product we use containing nitrogen atoms comes to us through the Haber-Bosch process in some way, says Karthish Manthiram, a chemical engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “All those nitrogen atoms came from ammonia, which means that there
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