FIXING NITROGEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 21, 26 January 1939, Page 15

FIXING NITROGEN.

A NEW PRINCIPLE. FERTILISERS AND EXPLOSIVES OZONE FORMATION BLOCKED (By THOMAS R. HENRY.) WASHINGTON. A new process for getting large quantities of nitrogen out of the atmosphere, depending on what may be an hitherto unknown property of matter, has just been patented by Major Ovid E. Roberts, jun., former Chief of Industrial Relations of the Chemical Warfare Service. § The new property of matter expounded ! by Major Roberts in his patent application is excitability of specific chemical molecules by specific wave-lengths of electro-magnetic energy. Nitrogen, the heavy aiul almost inert gas which constitutes almost 80 per cent of the air, can be made to combine with oxygen in compounds, which can be recovered for use in fertilisers or explosives when a mixture of the two gases is traversed by a narrow band of electro-magnetic wave-lengths between 1700 and 2100 angstrom units, a region in the spectrum which falls between the shortest of the invisible ultra-violet light rays and the longest X-rays. Such rays are obtained from an electrical '"brush discharge-' or in the form of the cathode rays from an aluminium of chromium electrode. The problem of getting nitrogen out of the great reservoir of the atmosphere in a unable form at reasonable cost has been studied by a generation of chemist*. Various processes have been used, all quite inexpensive. The most successful to date the carmabide chemical process used by the Government at its Muscle Shoals plant. The idea of extracting the heavy gas by a more direct process. Major Roberts says, is derived from the layered structure of the earth's atmosphere itself. Importance of Ozone Layer. About twenty miles above the earth's surface is a thin blanket of ozone, an invigorating gas in which three atoms of oxygen are joined together to form one molecule. If it were not for this blanket, all life on earth would probably 'be at an end. The ozone is formed from the ordinary oxygen of the atmosphere by the action of very short ultra-violet rays from the sun. Formation of the gas —which also is formed close to the surface of the earth by electrical discharges and by strokes of lightning—takes up the energy of these rays and prevents them from reaching the earth, where an excess of them probably would prove fatal to life. But, said Major Roberts, in explaining the principle upon which h's new process is based, the great ozone blanket also probably saves life on the earth's surface from 'being poisoned with nitric acid, which would be formed by a combination of a nitrogen-oxygen compound with water. Recent spectroscopic investigations have shown that nitrogen-oxygen compounds exist in considerable quantities in the very thin layers of the atmosphere above the blanket. They are brought about in some way, Major Roberts deduced, by the action of these short sun waves passing through the air, yet they are not formed in the lower iayers of the atmosphere and they are not mixed in the ozone layer. Apparently, lie found from experiment, oxygen and nitrogen, when mixed together, combine under the influence of these short waves when the percentage of oxygen in the combination is much less than in the air found near the earth's surface. Ozone is formed at the same time. The percentage of nitrous oxides, he found, constantly decreases during the process and that of ozone rises. Nature Prevents Poisoning. Apparently, nature has an automatic device for preventing the nitric acid poisoning of the eartlt, because the ozone formed simultaneously filters or screens out the rays responsible for the combination. Hence, the more of the triple-oxygen gas that is formed, the fewer nitrogen-oxygen combinations are possible. , v lie has overcome this difficulty, according to one of his claims in his patent application, by introducing into the mixture such gases as hydrogen, methane or carbon monoxide which tend to screen out the ozone-forming ravs. The reaction also is aided by lowering the concentration of oxygen in the gas mixture. He is merely doing on a small scale, but perhaps with a wide industrial application, what nature is doing on a gigantic scale in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, Major Roberts says. The reaction apparently depends. Major Roberts says, on some sort of excitability induced in the ordinarily inert nitrogen by the short waves. "I have found," lie says, "that molecules of certain substances appear to possess a specific property, wheih is as inueli an individual characteristic of a substance as is its specific gravity, melting point, l>oiling point or refractive index. This property is one by which the molecule uses, the energy of a specific wave length with the resultant effect of a high degree of excita'bilitv. It is akin to an energy transformation or accumulation. There appears for a time a storage of energy received, with a spill-over, or other evidence of a cumulative effect. The effect of such energisation is to induce a state conducive to combination with other molecules, or polymerisation." This specific excitability may be the reverse of an effect upon which is based the most delicate known method of chemical analysis. Any one of the 92 elements, when made luminous, emits light only of certain wave-lengths specific to itself. Wherever one of these wave-lengths appear in a spectrum— whether in a pinch of dust made luminous in an electric spark or in a distant star—the evidence is considered almost indisputable that the element is present. The principle cited by Major Roberts, if it is found to obtain throughout Nature, may involve an equally precise specificity to excitability.—N.A.N.A.