The industrialization of the Haber-Bosch process

Earth is bathed in nitrogen. It makes up about 78% of the atmosphere, and it’s stitched into every nucleotide, cell, living thing on planet. But before humans learned to synthesize ammonia using Haber-Bosch process, nitrogen was a major constraint proliferation life. Nearly all atmosphere comes form N 2 , an inert molecule unsuitable for chemistry that supports Living things need reactive nitrogen, which requires breaking powerful triple bond holding dinitrogen’s two atoms together. For first few billion years life Earth, there were ways convert oceans life-sustaining nitrogen: massive, sudden heat lightning strike ripping through or microbes sucking air enzyme slice bond. In early 20th century, chemist Fritz Haber