Talk:Haber process

Basic Cleanup in checklist

I plan to do this after the article has more information. At the moment, as it is only a list of headings and a couple of sentences, I think that it would be more appropriate to format it after I have added something to all the sections. Oliver Smith 05:47, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

OK, I've finished the article cleanup. Oliver Smith 08:48, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

points of attention

Oliver, I have a few points of attention: the electrolysis of water is one. But far more important is the occurrence of aqeous water. It seems an oxymoron but water is dissolved in water as are ions. Keep in mind the charge-distribution within the water molecule. So hydrogen-bonding is the cause of the strange behavior of water as a liquid: having its highest density as 4˚C and not its freezing point, and a rather extreme bioling point. For that one water molecule cannot ever exist, i.e. H⁺ = H₃O⁺, but even that isn;t the true picture as every protonium is caged by a cage of other water molecules - all responding to the disturbance in the charge distribution. The least number of water molecules acting as a single unit is 6 - 9. This should be reflected in the proposed reaction mechanism in he Haber process. If only by mentioning H⁺ = H₃O⁺ in stead of a proton. The hydroxyl is of course caged much in the same way as the protonium is. Robert Tito |  Talk  19:07, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

matter balance of reaction equations

please correct them to the proper matter balance. Robert Tito |  Talk  10:05, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Broken reference link

The external link used as reference 1 (about electrolysis) is broken or inactive. Can someone find a replacement for that reference? If not, then it should be deleted. Milton Beychok 22:42, 6 August 2008 (CDT)

Revisions

I just made a number of revision that were needed. Many of them involved re-arranging the order of the sections because there was too much focus placed on the electrolysis of water. I wholeheartedly believe that a stand-alone article on the electrolysis of water would be a good idea. But this article is about the Haber process of producing ammonia and, in my opinion, it still has much too much content devoted to the electrolysis of water which, at this current time, is not practiced on a commercial large-scale as a source of the hydrogen used to produce ammonia.

I also added numerous CZ internal links, corrected some serious errors in the methane reforming reactions, added some Main templates pointing to the Ammonia production article, made a number of minor copy edits and some minor rewording, and deleted the terminology "Fuel processors". As a chemical engineer for over 50 years (during which time I designed two ammonia production plants), I have never heard that terminology before seeing it in this article.

The section on the electrolysis of water is still much too large and detracts from the focus on the Haber process which is the subject of this article. Unless anyone posts some objections in the next week or so, I plan to reduce that section to perhaps two paragraphs. Milton Beychok 22:25, 8 August 2008 (CDT)

It has now been a week since I posted my intention to shorten the electrolysis section and there have been no objections posted. Therefore, I will proceed to shorten that section. Milton Beychok 13:32, 15 August 2008 (CDT)

States of matter

I see water is marked as liquid. At such high temperatures (~400 centigrades) water should be in a gas state, but there's also the pressure (~200 atm). I'm not an expert or anything, just checking. Yuval Langer 14:52, 14 August 2008 (CDT)

You are right, Yuval. The equations have now been corrected to show that the water is in the gas phase (i.e., steam). Milton Beychok 03:40, 15 August 2008 (CDT)

Use of NH3

I see a list of uses of ammonia, but I miss explosives. This caused WW-I to last 4 years. Without the Haber-Bosch process Germany would have collapsed much earlier. --Paul Wormer 09:10, 2 March 2010 (UTC)