Even though Mittasch found the perfect catalyst in iron, aluminum, and calcium because it was cheap and was better than Osmium he kept looking for better. He never found one though. Bosch thought the catalyst was the least they had to worry about because he was worried about the process. The process of turning the reactants into ammonia was putting the gases into the heaters, then to the reactor, onto the the cooling of the ammonia. Everything had to be perfect though because if it didn’t flow right everything would be ruined. The next problem was keeping the gas reactants (nitrogen and hydrogen) pure. If these elements were contaminated the ammonia wouldn’t turn out right. Nitrogen was easy because they got a method of purifying nitrogen from air from the Guinness Brewery. Hydrogen was a problem though. Water had plenty of hydrogen in that, but there were no companies that could fuel the need of hydrogen that Bosch needed. He decided he was going to put a group together to run electrical currents through the water that would bubble the hydrogen gas out of it. This ended up being too expensive so they went to another approach by blowing steam over some glowing coke. This didn’t work because it also made carbon monoxide. One member of the team found out how to make the amounts of hydrogen gas needed at lower costs and less carbon monoxide. Most of the hydrogen gas was pure, but the stuff that wasn’t was put into a charcoal purification system. Bosch still didn’t want to do this system because it could poison all the workers. Then he found a copper-containing solution that cleaned the poison out. Carl Krauch was put in charge of the copper-containing system because some of the investors were scared that they were just wasting their money on this project and the copper-containing system corroded some of the iron (the catalyst). He came up with a solution quickly and this is to add a little bit of ammonia to the mixture. Another problem 9 probably the biggest problem) was in the reaction chambers. The amount of pressure on the chambers. They needed the strongest and biggest compressors every made first of all. They started looking at different kinds of compressors one of them was the refrigeration compressor because it could be made big enough, but more problems arose. One of the problems with this system was that it was leaky and since hydrogen gas is very explosive that wasn’t good. Another problem was the temperature that it had to be at which would melt the system. The team decided to build their own refrigeration compressor which would fix the temperature and leaky problems because as they built it they could make it so it would fit their needs. To get this whole project done they doubled the amount of engineers at BASF. Bosch never took breaks and worked overtime so did his workers. This project spent so much money and time, but he knew it would all be worth it when they were all famous and made billions of marks. If this project didn’t work BASF would be no more. Bosch And the team finally made two of the ovens out of steel. Since some of the ingredients could make a massive explosion he encased them in concrete. When the machine were finally turned on they were making ammonia, not as much as 100 pounds a day like they were suppose to, but it was at least making some large amounts. Then sadly three days later both ovens exploded under the pressure. Everything worked except the walls of the oven made out of the inch thick steel. Bosch was very disappointed, but didn’t show the workers he was. Bosch wanted to fix this problem quickly so since he studies metals he did a metallographic analysis on it. The wall farthest away from the ammonia looked fine, but the wall closest to the ammonia was very dry and brittle. Bosch then had to find out what was making the wall so brittle because this “brittilization” ate through the steel until the pressure could force the wall to crack. So Bosch first tested heat which was not the problem. Than he thought that the ammonia was forming iron nitride with the iron, but this was not the case either. Finally they came to find out that hydrogen gas was getting shot through the steel and making it crack. Since the hydrogen was under so much pressure and heat it acted in weird ways. Both things can not change because heat is needed to break apart the nitrogen gas and pressure is needed to form the ammonia. Since it would take years to fix this problem Bosch came up with two solutions find a different metal or protect the steel from the hydrogen gas. They couldn’t find another metal because other were not good under pressure or those who were good under pressure were to expensive and rare. So they needed to fix the steel and make it hydrogen resistant. They started to add other elements to the steel which made it last longer, but ended up breaking due to the hydrogen. They decided to line the steel, but the liners would either get attacked or let the hydrogen through. He decided one day after going out with his co-workers that this would not work and they needed to accept the fact. He came up with a bright idea the next morning to separate the pressure and heat because the steel couldn’t take both of them. For the pressure chamber they could just line the walls with a cheap material that would get eaten away, but not affect the steel wall. They could use a cheap material since it didn’t need to stand high heats. They could just change the liner once it wears away since it was so cheap. His idea worked. He had another thing to worry about was explosions because of the build up of hydrogen gas in these ovens. So he ended up making what they called “Bosch Holes” which were just holes in the steel so the hydrogen could be let out, but not in big amounts so it would be dangerous. When testing these new and improved ovens they were working for months. The team did find another way to flush out the hydrogen gas build up later with nitrogen gas. Soon almost no machines were breaking down or exploding. There were almost no other problems with the machines and all they had to do was make the machines more and more efficient. The prototype was making about two tons of ammonia a day. They were starting to look for spots to put the machine. They were hoping for a spot near water to help with production of hydrogen gas. They found a place called Oppau and started to make blueprints for the factory.
While so problems arrised. Not with the machine with its patents. A lawsuit was formed saying that Nernst had said that nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressures can be made into ammonia a year before Haber did. The chemical firm supporting this cse was their big competitor Hoechst. The evidence was in Nernst’s and Haber’s argument at the Bunsen Society meeting years ago. BASF though had lawyers on the case, but continued the project. Than disaster struck. Heinrich von Brunck died. He was the only reason BASF took on this project. Bosch was saddened and nervous because his dear friend had died, but also they didn’t have any big supporters of the project anymore.
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