Wiktionary
n. (context inorganic chemistry English) The nitrogen-fixation reaction of nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas, over an enriched iron or ruthenium catalyst, used industrially to produce ammonia.
Wikipedia
The Haber process, also called the Haber–Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today. It is named after its inventors, the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed it in the first half of the 20th century. The process converts atmospheric nitrogen (N) to ammonia (NH) by a reaction with hydrogen (H) using a metal catalyst under high temperatures and pressures:
N + 3 H → 2 NH(ΔH° = −91.8 kJ) => (ΔH° = −45.8 kJ· mol)Before the development of the Haber process, ammonia had been difficult to produce on an industrial scale with early methods such as the Birkeland–Eyde process and Frank–Caro process all being highly inefficient.
Although the Haber process is mainly used to produce fertilizer today, during WWI it provided Germany with a source of ammonia for the production of explosives, compensating for the Allied trade blockade on Chilean saltpeter.
Usage examples of "haber process".
The conveyor belt of subduction, feeding ocean sediments deep into the earth to be crushed and metamorphized over eons, was as obsolete on Stateless as the Bessemer process for steel, the Haber process for ammonia.