Haber Process

Fritz Haber created a brilliant plan known as the Haber-Bosch Process. This includes “proving that ammonia could indeed be cooked up in the laboratory, using hydrogen and ordinary nitrogen gas,” as stated in Head Count by Elizabeth Kolbert. Nitrogen is vital to life, but plants can only use fixed nitrogen and the lack of fixed nitrogen is often the limiting factor in an ecosystem. The ability to fix nitrogen ourselves seemed to be a perfect solution. Nitrogen is the most common element in the earth’s atmosphere—nearly four times more plentiful than oxygen and more than eighty times more plentiful than argon, therefore this process has succeeded to provide 90% of the world’s food. Haber had, as quoted in the article “figured out how to turn air into bread.” The article states that in 85 years the population will grow to an unsupportable amount of 11 billion, and total fertility rates range from .79 in developed countries to 7 in struggling countries. I think that if people are so concerned about the uncontrollable growth worldwide, we should minimize the usefulness of the Haber Process to create food for countries like Mali and Somalia, who have the highest fertility rates, and maybe reaching Weisman’s goal of bringing down the world’s population to two billion within two or three generations. Keeping the HBP in struggling countries, to decrease environmental concerns might result in the global T.F.R. of about one, which will obviously help the boom of population. I believe the creation of the Haber Process can provide lots of positive outcomes if used cautiously.

Seneca Lake Research Plan

Research Question: How does the water quality of Seneca Lake affect the conditions of plants/animals living in the lake?

Variables:

• Controlled- amount of water being tested, what part of the lake we test from, what day we go on
• Independent- depths of the three locations
• Other- the amount of dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH, temperature

There are many factors that are crucial to the success of aquatic ecosystems such as the levels of

dissolved oxygen and pH. A deficiency of DO is a sign of an unhealthy body of water. There are a variety of factors affecting levels of DO. The atmosphere is a major source, waves and tumbling

water mix atmospheric oxygen with lake water. Oxygen is also produced by rooted aquatic plants and

algae as a product of photosynthesis. The pH of river water is the measure of how acidic or basic the water is on a scale of 0-14. It is a measure of hydrogen ion concentration. According to the Water Research Center, the generally accepted minimum amount of DO that will support a large population of various fishes is from 4 to 5 mg/l. When the DO drops below 3 mg/l, even the hardy fish die. Species that cannot tolerate low levels of DO - mayfly nymphs, stonefly nymphs, and beetle larvae - will be replaced by a few kinds of pollution-tolerant organisms, such as worms and fly larvae. The Science of Seneca manual says that a pH of less than 5 or higher than 8.5 is bad for plant life. Low pH is especially harmful to immature fish and insects. According to Lenntech, water with a pH of about 9.6 will cause the gills and eyes of fish to be damaged.

Hypothesis: I think the water quality, DO and pH levels of Seneca Lake will be within a healthy level in order to maintain animal and plant life.

Procedure:

• Collect an equal water sample from 3 of our locations
• test for DO by adding 8 drops of the manganese(II) sulfrate solution (bottle 4167) followed by 8 drops of the alkaline potassium iodize azide solution (bottle 7166) to the LaMotte sample bottle
• mix it all up and wait 3-4 minutes to allow the orange/brown precipitate to settle
• add one level of sulfamic acid (bottle 6286) to the solution you made above
• shake until all crystals have dissolved
• pour this new solution from the LaMotte bottle into the titration tube up to 20ml
• fill the Direct Reading Titrator (0337) up to the 0 mark with the sodium thiosulfate solution
• put the titrator through the hole in the cap of the titration tube and stir in one drop of titrant until the bluish color is gone.
• dump everything left over into a labeled waste container and clean with distilled water.

Data: The three different sites we used for sampling were at locations of 42˙50’N 76˙58’W, 42˙50’N 76˙57’ and 42˙50’N 76˙58’. The weather was on average, about 54 degrees and mostly cloudy. It was moderately windy, and the water was calm for the most part. My group’s dredge sample was taken at a water depth of 8 meters. The character of the surface was soupy,  there was no acid reaction and no smell. We found several clumps of about 10-20 mussels each, scattered throughout the middle and edge of the sample. The mussels were mostly clams of light color, such as light browns and greys. The dredge sample had 2 or 3 layers of sediments/clay ranging in color from light to dark. After we evaluated the sediment dredge, we analyzed the particle sizes. We also collected plankton, in which my group specifically found 2 Anabaena, 6 Copepod, 1 Rotifer, and 3 Bosmina at a depth of 38.9m.

Results:

Particle Size Analysis

Sieve Mesh Size	Volume Retained	% of total volume retained
14	80ml	20
24	3-5ml	1
42	220ml	55
80	20ml	5
175	20ml	5

Chemical Results Sample 1 Am and Pm

Am		Pm
Latitude	42˙49.9’ N	Latitude	42˙49’N
Longitude	76˙59.9’ W	Longitude	76˙57’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	7˙C
Depth	38.9m	Depth	54m
pH	7.3	pH	7.4
Chloride	200ppm	Chloride	180ppm
D.O	30ppm	D.O	10.4ppm
DTB	46.6	DTB	62.6

Chemical Results Sample 2 Am and Pm

Am		Pm
Lat.	42˙51’N	Lat.	42˙84’W
Long.	76˙58’W	Long.	76˙52’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	14˙C
Depth	10m	Depth	10m
pH	7.4	pH	7.4
Chloride	300ppm	Chloride	143ppm
D.O	6ppm	D.O	10ppm
DTB	22.7m	DTB	22.3m

Chemical Results Sample 3 Am and Pm

Am
Lat.	42˙52’N	Lat.	42˙55’N
Long.	76˙57’W	Long.	76˙56’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	13˙C
Depth	Surface	Depth	Surface
pH	7.5	pH	7.3
Chloride	200ppm	Chloride	140ppm
D.O	10ppm	D.O	10ppm
DTB	8m	DTB	7.5m

Frequency of Phytoplankton

Sample	Total Species	Frequency of Species	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
1Am	9		2	2	2	3
2Am	15		2	2	1	7	2	1
3Am	9		1	1	3	1	1	2
1Pm	21		1	1	1	16	2
2Pm	17		1	1	1	2	5	7
3Pm	19		1	7	3	1	1	6

pH Measurements:

Chloride Measurements: Units in PPM

Discussion/Evaluation: Based off the data my group collected, the pH measurement for Sample 1am was smaller than Sample 1pm, while both measurements for Sample 2am and Sample 2pm were the same. Sample 3am had the biggest measurement. The Chloride measurements for Samples 1am, 2am, and 3am were all larger than the pm samples.

Conclusion: Mussels live on the bottom on the lake, and the water samples were taken at heights above the bottom, so any results the mussels had on the water is not accurate. The research activities performed were kind of irrelevant to my hypothesis due to the creation of my hypothesis before I was informed of what we were actually going to measure. My hypothesis was partly answered during the Chemical Results section, but not answered enough to draw a proven conclusion. In order to fully test my hypothesis, I would have needed to find more plankton, or other animals that could indicate the quality of water. I also stated that I was going to evaluate the different types of plant life in order to determine water quality, but we did nothing with plants. Human error was another major factor in this experiment, during chemical results, many groups left the Chloride cap off for too long, or didn’t put exactly 8 drops of the required chemicals into our solutions.

 

Citations:  

• Water Quality." Water Quality. Cuyahoga River Water Quality Monitoring Program, Cleveland State University, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
• Oram, Brian, Mr. "Dissolved Oxygen in a Stream May Vary from 0 Mg/l to 18 Mg/l. Readings above 18 Mg/l Are Physically Impossible." Dissolved Oxygen in Water, Streams, Watershed. Water Research Watershed Center, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
• "Water Treatment Solutions." PH and Alkalinity. LennTech, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.