Karl Bosch, a German chemist, engineer, and industry leader, developed a commercial process for converting gaseous hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia, an important component in the production of fertilizers and explosives. In addition, methods that he helped develop to synthesize gasoline, methanol, and hydrogen had a profound influence on the chemical industry. In 1931, Bosch and Friedrich Bergius shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their pioneering work in chemical high-pressure methods .
Bosch was born in Cologne, Germany, on August 27, 1874, the eldest child of Karl and Paula Bosch. The elder Bosch sold gas and plumbing supplies and prospered as a businessman and entrepreneur. Young Bosch, who showed an interest in and talent for science and technology, was prompted by his father to study metallurgy. In 1894, Bosch enrolled at the Technical University in Charlottenburg, Germany. He studied metallurgy and mechanical engineering, and acquired practical machine-shop experience. But he was disappointed with the semi-empirical methods used in his technical classes, and in 1896 he decided to enter the University of Leipzig to study chemistry. Two short years later, after submitting a dissertation on the study of carbon compounds, he received his doctorate.
In 1899, Bosch went to work as a chemist for the Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF) at Ludwigshafen am Rhein. BASF was a company specializing in making coal tar dyes. Bosch's first assignment was to find an inexpensive method of producing indigo, a dark blue dye important in dyeing cotton.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany was importing a half million tons of Chilean sodium nitrate every year for use in producing fertilizers and explosives. Because ammonia , a scarce natural resource, can be used to produce sodium nitrate, many investigators had sought a simple way of using electricity to produce ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen. The existing method was costly, however, because Germany lacked a plentiful and inexpensive source of hydroelectric power. In 1904, Fritz Haber found that large quantities of ammonia could be produced by combining hydrogen and nitrogen at high pressures and temperatures and using osmium and uranium as catalysts.
In 1909, under Bosch's leadership, BASF acquired from Haber the patent rights for the ammonia process. Bosch realized that for the Haber process to be commercially feasible he would need huge quantities of hydrogen and nitrogen, an effective cheap catalyst, and equipment able to withstand extreme pressures and temperatures. He devised a method of separating large quantities of hydrogen from a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Nitrogen was obtained in pure form by collecting fractions of liquid air. More than 20,000 experiments were necessary to find a suitable catalyst to replace Haber's expensive uranium and osmium. But Bosch's greatest challenge was to construct a reaction chamber that could withstand temperatures of 500 degrees Celsius and pressures that would easily rupture most vessels. Haber had used a steel chamber that had become brittle and dangerously unstable because the hydrogen used in the process caused the steel to lose its carbon content. Bosch cleverly substituted a double-walled chamber. The inside chamber was made of soft steel and could leak hydrogen. The outer chamber was fortified with heavy-duty carbon steel. By forcing a cold mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen gas at 200 atmospheres into the space between the inner and outer chambers, Bosch was able to equalize the pressure on the inner chamber while keeping the outer chamber cool. In 1911, only two years after acquiring the Haber process, BASF began producing commercial quantities of ammonia at a plant near Oppau. During World War I, BASF expanded its production facilities, and by 1918 Germany was producing more than 200,000 tons of synthetic ammonia annually.
In 1919 Bosch became the managing director of BASF. Nonetheless, he remained active in the laboratory, and four years later he succeeded in developing a commercial method for preparing methyl alcohol by combining carbon monoxide and hydrogen at high pressures. In 1925, faced with increasing competition from dye industries in Britain and America, BASF merged with six other German chemical firms to become I. G. Farben , and Bosch was appointed its president. The same year, Friedrich Bergius sold BASF his rights to a method of making gasoline from coal dust and hydrogen. Although Bosch succeeded in applying his technical skills to the Bergius method, the process never became profitable. However, for their work in large scale chemical synthesis, Bosch and Bergius shared the 1931 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Four years later Bosch became chairman of the I.G. Farben board of directors.
In addition to his work on ammonia and gasoline, Bosch studied catalytic methods, phase relationships, photochemistry, and polymers. He influenced the design of large-scale chemical reactors, compressors, and monitoring devices. He published articles on chemical reactions and received many awards, including the Liebig Medal of the German Chemical Society and the Carl Lueg Memorial Medal of the Association of German Metallurgists. As a tribute to his intellect and leadership abilities he was elected in 1937 to Germany's highest scientific position, president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (later renamed the Max Planck Society). Ironically, while Bosch had helped Germany become independent from Chilean sodium nitrate and assured his country a steady supply of ammonia for the weapons industry, he openly opposed Hitler and the Nazi regime.
Bosch married Else Schilbach in 1902; they had two children, a son and a daughter. Committed to education and life-long learning, Bosch relaxed by collecting butterflies, beetles, plants, and minerals. He also enjoyed stargazing from his private observatory near Heidelberg. He died in 1940 in Heidelberg after a long illness.
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