The traditional industrial-scale process for creating ammonia, the Haber-Bosch process, relies on extreme heat and pressure to create the chemical reaction that turns atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, but a ‘benchtop take’ on the Haber-Bosch process has been used by Marb’s lab to produce ammonia at much lower pressures.
The process requires hydrogen, made by dripping sulphuric acid onto zinc strips, and then dried through a bed of silica gel.
The dried hydrogen is then passed through a quartz glass reaction tube, which is heated by a modified camp stove, with a ceramic boat filled with a catalyst mixture of aluminium oxide and iron powder.
The presence of ammonia is detected by a vial of Berthelot’s reagent turning dark blue.
The experiment demonstrates the process and highlights the cheap materials that can be used to build lab apparatus.
