The Ammonia Oxidation Process for Nitric Acid Manufacture

It is little more than fifty years since the first manufacture of nitric acid by the oxidation of ammonia over a platinum catalyst. Ostwald’s original industrial plant had an output of some 100 tons of acid a year; today the world capacity for nitric acid manufacture by this process is about ten million tons a year. This article traces the beginnings and early developments of the process until it became commercially established.