Gives Out Secrets Of Making Ammonia.

New York Times 100 years ago today, September 12, 1912:
Noted German Chemist Expounds Before Congress His Synthetic Process.
SUN TO DO WORK OF STEAM
Italian Scientist Predicts that "Black and Nervous Civilization" Will Yield to Quiet One.

    The secret of the latest achievement of chemical industry, the synthetical manufacture of ammonia, was divulged yesterday at a meeting of the Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry in the Horace Mann Auditorium by the discoverer of the process, Dr. H.A. Bernthsen of Ludwigshafen-on-Rhine, Germany. The discovery is only old enough to have been duly patented everywhere and the first public announcement of the discovery was purposely delayed by Dr. Bernthsen lor the benefit of his brother chemists, who are now assembled in this city.
    When the last congress was assembled in London in 1903 Dr. Bernthsen publicly announced that the solution of the problem on which he had been working for years seemed further off than ever, and he added that the solution looked like an utter impossibility. It was with added pleasure and enthusiasm, therefore, that his audience of scientific men received the good news at first hand yesterday.
    The ammonia of the years to come, as a result of this discovery, will be synthetically prepared instead of being taken from the limited supply of nitrogen compounds found in the Chili saltpeter beds or abstracted from the by-product of the manufacture of gas or coke, which is called ammonia liquor or ammonia sulphate. The need of large quantities of ammonia for the nitrogenous fertilizers, which must be relied upon to make every acre of soil produce its share of the world's harvest, is proof of the importance of this discovery.
    The story of the process for uniting the elements of ammonia, nitrogen, and hydrogen, as told by Dr. Bernthsen, fills a good-sized pamphlet. Briefly stated, the synthesis is accomplished by placing the constituent elements under a pressure of 200 atmospheres, and at a temperature of from 650 to 700 degrees centigrade. Some other substance upon which neither of these elements acts technically known as a catalyst must also be employed as a receptacle and this, Dr. Bernthsen found, must be an iron catalyst prepared from the purest of iron oxides.
    "Taking such an iron catalyst occupying a space of 20 cubic centimeters," the discoverer of the process explained, "and with a gas speed of 250 liters per hour (measured at ordinary temperature) it is an easy matter to obtain, for example, 5 grams, or per liter of contact space, 250 grams of ammonia in an hour."

The Receptacle Important.
    Speaking about substitutes that may be employed for the iron catalyst, Dr. Bernthsen said:
    "Manganese, which is related to iron, also gives good results under specific conditions and without the addition of foreign substances. The conditions are that care must be taken to completely free the mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen before it enters the contact space, and from oxygen, either free or combined, for instance, as steam and water. Merely drying with calcium chloride is not sufficient.
    "Again, it has been found that another element of the iron group, molybdenum, is by itself an excellent catalyst. Compounds of molybdenum may also be used, for instance molybdic acid or ammonium molybdenum.
    "Under certain conditions, not published as yet, tungsten, either the metal itself or as an alloy or a nitrogen compound, has been found to be a suitable catalyst
    "I want to impress the fact that the greatest care must be taken to free the nitrogen and hydrogen entirely from all contact with poisons. Thus a trace of sulphur, one part per million, in the gas mixture can, under certain conditions, be injurious so that even electrolytically prepared hydrogen must generally be further specially purified."
    In the profits of the new industry Dr. Bernthsen saw the brightest hopes. His own factory at Oppau, near Ludwigshafen-on-Rhine, he said, was already under construction, and he predicted that ammonia would soon be manufactured by the new process in this country.
    "It can also be regarded as certain," he said, "that the development of this industry will not take place at the cost of other branches of industry and commerce. The present annual requirements or nitrogenous fertilizers and their continued growth are astounding. In 1911 over $190,000,000 worth of these fertilizers were utilized. The increase in use during the last few years, moreover, of ammonium sulphate and saltpetre were enormous, amounting to millions of dollars. It can readily be seen what enormous quantities of synthetic ammonia sulphate must be produced to affect the total natural production (about 185,000 tons) by as much as a year.
    "A peaceful development of the various new industries for the combination of the nitrogen of the air side by side is to be expected, and without encroaching at all on the previous production of nitrogenous fertilizers, a favorable horoscope may be cast for a fortunate career for the new industry."

Sunshine When Coal Is Gone.
    Another noted chemist attending the Congress of Applied Chemistry, Dr. Giacomo Ciamician of Bologna, Italy, in a lecture delivered in Italian yesterday afternoon in the great hall of the College of the City of New York, arrived at the ultimate aim of making the earth produce more food for its ever increasing population in quite a different way. He also was hopeful of a "milk and honey" future for mankind, but, unlike Dr. Bernthsen and most of the noted lecturers who have been heard on conservation topics during the week, he would trust less to the fulfillment of the happy future in synthetical discoveries than to re-supplying the earth with the energy which it is gradually losing. He would have man avail himself of the energy that is daily going to waste in unlimited quantities — plain ordinary sunshine.
    In his lecture on "The Photochemistry of the Future" Dr. Ciamician took for his text the inevitable truth that the earth's supply of coal is unfortunately not inexhaustible.
    "Modern civilization," he said, "is the daughter of coal, for this offers to mankind the solar energy in its most concentrated form — that is, in a form in which it has been accumulated in a long series of centuries. Modern man uses it with increasing eagerness and thoughtless prodigality for the conquest of the world, and, like the mythical gold of the Rhine, coal is to-day the greatest source of energy and wealth."
    After explaining the power of the sun as a producer of energy the speaker made this comparison:
    "The quantity of coal produced annually (1909) in the mines of Europe and America is calculated at about 925,000,000 tons, and adding to this 175,000,000 tons of lignite, we reach 1,100,000,000 tons, or a little over 1,000,000,000. Even making allowances for the absorption of heat on the part of the atmosphere and for other circumstances, we see that the solar energy that reaches a small tropical country — say of the size of Latium — is equal annually to the energy produced by the entire amount of coal mined in the world. The Desert of Sahara, with its 6,000,000 square kilometers, receives daily solar energy equivalent to 6,000,000,000 tons of coal."
    Dr. Ciamician's conclusions were striking and if all he foresees comes to pass the future will be far more wonderful than some of the realms of Jules Verne. He said :
    "On the arid lands there will spring up industrial colonies without smoke and without smokestacks; forests of glass tubes will extend over the plains, and glass buildings will rise everywhere; inside of these will take place the photochemical processes that hitherto have been the guarded secret of the plants, but that will have been mastered by human industry which will know how to make them bear even more abundant fruit than nature, for nature is not in a hurry and mankind is. And if in a distant future the supply of coal becomes completely exhausted, civilization will not be checked by that, for life and civilization will continue as long as the sun shines! If our black and nervous civilization, based on coal, shall be followed by a quieter civilization based on the utilization of solar energy, that will not be harmful to progress and to human happiness.
    "The photochemistry of the future should not however, be postponed to such distant times; I believe that industry will do well in using from this very day all the energies that nature puts at its disposal. So far, human civilization has made use almost exclusively of fossil solar energy. Would it not be advantageous to make better use of radiant energy?"
    Many of the 250 women in attendance at the congress engaged in an all-day sightseeing and shopping trip yesterday and were entertained at luncheon at Gimbel Brothers store. Preceding the luncheon they were conducted through the establishment. The congress will come to a close to-night with a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Many of the scientists will go to Western points, the tour terminating in Chicago on Sept. 21.