History of Ammonia

The Romans called the ammonium chloride deposits they collected from near the Temple of Amun (Greek Ἄμμων Ammon) in ancient Libya 'sal ammoniacus' (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple. Salts of ammonia have been known from very early times; thus the term Hammoniacus sal appears in the writings of Pliny, although it is not known whether the term is identical with the more modern sal-ammoniac (ammonium chloride). In the form of sal-ammoniac (nushadir) ammonia was important to the Muslim alchemists as early as the 8th century, first mentioned by the Arab chemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, and to the European alchemists since the 13th century, being mentioned by Albertus Magnus. In the 15th century, Basilius Valentinus showed that ammonia could be obtained by the action of alkalis on sal-ammoniac. At a later period, when sal-ammoniac was obtained by distilling the hooves and horns of oxen and neutralizing the resulting carbonate with hydrochloric acid, the name "spirit of hartshorn" was applied to ammonia. Gaseous ammonia was first isolated by Joseph Priestley in 1774 and was termed by him "alkaline air". The Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia from the nitrogen in the air was developed by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch in 1909 and patented in 1910. The ammonia was used to produce explosives to sustain their war effort. Prior to the availability of cheap natural gas, hydrogen as a precursor to ammonia production was produced via the electrolysis of water or using the chloralkali process.