200 years of industrial catalysis, the industrial catalysts that changed human society

Catalysis plays a very important role in the progress of human civilization and the development of the world economy. It is widely used in energy, chemical, food, pharmaceutical and electronic industries because of its ability to transform raw materials into high value-added chemical products and fuels in an efficient, green and economical way. Currently, catalysis is used in more than 90% of the world's chemical production processes. 

It is no exaggeration to say that every major breakthrough in the field of catalysis has dramatically changed the way of production and life of human beings. Today, we will briefly list some of the important catalytic reactions and catalysts in the field of industrial catalysis.

I. Sulfuric acid industry

Sulfuric acid is widely used in various industrial sectors, mainly in fertilizer industry, metallurgy industry, petroleum industry, machinery industry, pharmaceutical industry, detergent, military industry, atomic energy industry and aerospace industry, etc. It is also used in the production of dyes, pesticides, chemical fibers, plastics, paints, and various basic organic and inorganic chemical products. During the World War, the development of the sulfuric acid industry was closely linked to the military industry, and the sulfuric acid industry was the vane of a country's military power.

II. Production of Chlorine Gas

In 1867, Deacon developed the Deacon process for the preparation of Cl2 by oxidation of HCl using CuSO4 as a catalyst. When direct current became popular, the process was gradually replaced by the chlor-alkali industry. Chlorine gas is mainly used to produce vinyl resins, chlorine-containing chemical raw materials, and tap water consumption. Chlorine gas was used as a chemical weapon in World War I, the first large-scale chemical warfare in human history.

III. Nitric acid industry

In 1906, Ostward, a German scientist, developed the contact oxidation process of ammonia gas with Pt/Rh alloy network as a catalyst for the production of nitric acid. To this day, the process is still the core of the nitric acid industry. The main process is to pass a mixture of ammonia and air (oxygen: nitrogen ≈ 2:1) into a scorching hot (760-840°C) platinum-rhodium alloy net, where the ammonia is oxidized to nitric oxide (NO) under the catalyst of the alloy net. 

The generated nitric oxide continues to be oxidized to nitrogen dioxide using the residual oxygen after the reaction, which is subsequently passed into water to produce nitric acid. Of course, the industrialization of ammonia contact oxidation was made possible by the development of the ammonia synthesis process, which is highlighted below, and in 1909, Ostward was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (for his work on catalysis and his study of chemical equilibrium and the basic principles of chemical reaction rates).

IV. Synthetic ammonia industry

In 1898, A. Frank and others in Germany discovered that nitrogen in air could be fixed by calcium carbide to produce calcium cyanamide (also known as lime nitrogen), which could be further reacted with superheated water vapor to obtain ammonia, which was the basis of the early ammonia industry (before the invention of the Haber synthesis process).

The ammonia industry is considered to be the greatest chemical invention of the 20th century and is also known as the "bellwether" reaction in multiphase catalysis. The ammonia industry, as the main means of artificial nitrogen fixation, made the mass production of nitrogen fertilizer a reality, which greatly increased food production and solved the problem of feeding hundreds of millions of people.