Humans weren’t the first organisms on this planet to figure out how to turn the abundance of nitrogen in the atmosphere into a chemically useful form; that honor goes to some microbes that learned how to make the most of the primordial soup they called home. But to our credit, once [Messrs. Haber and Bosch] figured out how to make ammonia from thin air, we really went gangbusters on it, to the tune of 8 million tons per year of the stuff.
While it’s not likely that [benchtop take on the Haber-Bosch process demonstrated by [Marb’s lab] will turn out more than the barest fraction of that, it’s still pretty cool to see the ammonia-making process executed in such an up close and personal way. The industrial version of Haber-Bosch uses heat, pressure, and catalysts to overcome the objections of diatomic nitrogen to splitting apart and forming NH3; [Marb]’s version does much the same, albeit at tamer pressures.
[Marb]’s process starts with hydrogen made by dripping sulfuric acid onto zinc strips and drying it through a bed of silica gel. The dried hydrogen then makes its way into a quartz glass reaction tube, which is heated by a modified camp stove. Directly above the flame is a ceramic boat filled with catalyst, which is a mixture of aluminum oxide and iron powder; does that sound like the recipe for thermite to anyone else?
A vial of Berthelot’s reagent, which [Marb] used in his recent blood ammonia assay, indicates when ammonia is produced. To start a run, [Marb] first purges the apparatus with nitrogen, to prevent any hydrogen-related catastrophes. After starting the hydrogen generator and flaring off the excess, he heats up the catalyst bed and starts pushing pure nitrogen through the chamber. In short order the Berthelot reagent starts turning dark blue, indicating the production of ammonia.
It’s a great demonstration of the process, but what we like about it is the fantastic tips about building lab apparatus on the cheap. Particularly the idea of using hardware store pipe clamps to secure glassware; the mold-it-yourself silicone stoppers were cool too.
For how long will this kind of content be legal on Youtube?
wrong place to ask. or was this a rhetorical question?
Making nitrogen capture fertilizer is illegal now?
Yeah I’m totally sure this will be used for gardening… You know it wasn’t invented for fertilizer, right? In fact it was only used as fertilizer because there was so much spare industrial capacity after the world wars, and over-reliance on nitrogen has ended up changing agriculture forever
Well, in the Dr.Stone anime there’s a literal instruction on how to make black powder by making ammonia with some scrap platinum as catalyst using literally the same Haber-Bosch setup.
I took a look at it. But it’s the Ostwald process and not Haber-Bosch. References in future for scientific publications: Anime
Depends if you’re an enthusiastic amateur (verboten) or a brainrot spewer with a large audience who bows to editorial pressure (permitted).
As long as channels stay away from Haber’s more notorious chemistry, they’ll be fine.
I mean this is surely a precursor to those. Nobody is going to make stuff for their garden or farm with this in a way that is economical, but it helps get around certain red flags that go up when you buy more fertilizer than you have farmland.. Now with a nice tutorial on youtube
The synthesized amounts of ammonia in my experiment are very small. There are much more efficient methods. And you can buy ammonia solution anywhere. Fritz Haber propagated chlorine gas in particular as a combat gas. The video is an instructive demonstration of the Haber-Bosch process. Nothing more. Turning it into a terrorist threat is absurd, but it is common pigeonholing by people who are not familiar with chemistry.
Ya right, if someone wants to bl## stuff up he FOR SURE will use that video as a starting point. People will rather risking a CIA visit and buy stuff online than getting into this kind of synthesis…
The bad guys know what/how/where. They don’t mess around with super small scale hobby chemistry.
If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t be looking for howtos on the internet for stuff to make a big bang.
I’d just buy a set of Encyclopaedia Brittanica from the late 1940s to 1950s.
All you ever need to know about basic chemistry is in there, plus all the useful poisons.
Then the resource of old chemistry textbooks, available for pennies in charity bookshops.
Failing that, there’s plenty old military books available describing guerilla warfare and how it’s done, eg the Australian army published a series of booklets describing how to counter VietCong traps, but also detailed how to make them.
The secret is out there and even if the knowledge of how to make ammonia was a subject for censorship, how to make gunpowder is common knowledge.
a mixture of aluminum oxide and iron powder; does that sound like the recipe for thermite *
Backwards: It’s the *product of a thermite reaction between alumin[i]um and iron oxide.
Also, the catalyst recipe seems pretty variable. Some references say it’s iron oxide, some say elemental iron mixed with other metal oxides (like here), and some say other elements and oxides are also used. Iron with alumina support with small quantities of other elements and oxides added for longevity and increased efficiency.
Yeesh, the formatting character rules are picky. Is there a formatting guide/HOWTO somewhere?
I remember reading the wikipedia page about the Haber process and being amazed by some of the stats: e.g.
Half the nitrogen in the human body comes from the Haber process and 3-5% of the natural gas used is used to drive the Haber process and 1-2% of total energy production.
Wouldn’t a home made electrolyser be a better source of hydrogen? Using H2SO4 seems a very roundabout way to get to hydrogen!
H2SO4 or HCL and zinc is a common way to produce H2 on lab scale. But most labs just use gas bottles nowadays.
Use electricity generated by solar or wind to do water electrolysis
I vaguely recall the airships of 100 years ago made hydrogen by reacting steam with red hot iron. Maybe the heated catalyst section can be modified somewhat to also accommodate iron powder?
What, without drying or even removing oxygen?
no, I am a chemist and Al oxide and iron is not a recipe for thermit!
“a mixture of aluminum oxide and iron powder; does that sound like the recipe for thermite to anyone else?”
Thermite would be aluminum powder and iron oxide. You’d have aluminum oxide and iron after a thermite reaction.
Proof Hackaday commenters don’t read comments.