Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants. Though four-fifths of air is made up of nitrogen, plants are unable to absorb it directly. To resolve this, plants were given nitrogen-rich fertilizers. By the 1900s however, natural supplies of nitrogen such as bird droppings were in short supply.
In 1909, German chemist Fritz Haber successfully managed to capture atmospheric nitrogen. Nitrogen was combined with hydrogen under high pressure and heat, to form ammonia which could be made into fertilizers and similar products. This process, known as the Haber process, had potential applications in industrial and agricultural sectors.
In 1913, a research team from BASF, under the leadership of Carl Bosch developed the first industrial level application of this process, now occasionally called the Haber-Bosch process.
In the early twenty-first century, the global demand for ammonia was over 100 million tons. The success of the Haber process lies in satisfying about 99 per cent of this demand.
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