Luigi Casale

Luigi Casale (born November 22, 1882 in Langosco , † February 18, 1927 in Vigevano ) was an Italian chemist and industrialist. He developed a process for the synthesis of ammonia that made him internationally known after the First World War .

life and work

Luigi Casale came from Langosco, a place in Lomellina . He was the third of eleven children of Santino Casale, the manager of the property of the Counts of Langosco. Luigi studied chemistry at the University of Turin , which he graduated in 1908. He then stayed for a few years as an assistant at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry under the direction of Michele Fileti . From 1912 to 1913 he studied in Berlin in Walther Nernst's group , where his interest in ammonia synthesis was aroused. After his return to Italy, he carried out his first work on the synthesis of ammonia in Arturo Miolati's group in Turin.

When the First World War broke out , Casale joined the royal army , which placed him in a research group at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Naples . He stayed there until 1917 and did research on irritant and poisonous gases and their antidotes. Poisoning from an accident in the laboratory forced him to stop this research.

Casale method

Inspired by Miolati, it then devoted itself to the development of a method for the production of synthetic ammonia . His first experimental reactor came from a cannon on the battleship Dante Alighieri , according to the motto swords to plowshares . In Italy there was a great need for ammonia for the manufacture of fertilizers after the First World War . Despite the financial and technical difficulties that arose from the difficult economic situation in Italy in the immediate post-war period, Casale managed to achieve his goal and develop a new process of ammonia synthesis at a pressure of 800 to 1000 bar. This made it possible to obtain ammonia by direct condensation. Due to the high pressure, the reactor could be made smaller and, through the injection of cold gas, allowed simple temperature control, used simpler catalysts and made changing the catalyst easier.

In Rumianca , the first pilot plant to be built using the Casale method produced around 200 kilograms of synthetic ammonia per day in 1919. He had his process patented and with the financial support of US companies he founded the Ammonia Casale Company in Terni in April 1921 with new plants that enabled him to further develop the process. When it was founded, synthetic ammonia was only produced by BASF in Germany.

By 1923, the Casale process was introduced in Italy, France, Japan, Switzerland, as well as Spain and the USA. A total of around 80,000 tons of ammonia per year were produced in more than 15 plants. In 1927 the installed capacity was already 320,000 tons per year. Around 200 ammonia plants have been built around the world on the basis of Casale's first-generation patents. Shortly after Ammonia Casale was founded, a methanol production process was also developed.

Casale died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1927 at the age of 44. It has been speculated that his early death was a sequel to the laboratory accident during his time in Naples.

Web pages

• History of Ammonia Casale , at casale.ch, accessed on August 30, 2019

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bruno Waeser: The air nitrogen industry with consideration of the Chilean industry and the coke oven nitrogen . Springer-Verlag, 1932, ISBN 978-3-662-34599-3 , p. 141 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-662-34599-3 .
2. ^ ^{A b c} Anthony S. Travis: The Synthetic Nitrogen Industry in World War I: Its Emergence and Expansion . Springer, 2015, ISBN 978-3319193564 , pp. 119–120.
3. ↑ Patent US1478550 : Catalytic apparatus for the synthesis of ammonia. Published December 25, 1923 , inventor: Luigi Casale. ‌
4. ↑ James A. Kent (Ed.): Kent and Riegel's Handbook of Industrial Chemistry and Biotechnology . Verlag Springer, 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-27842-1 , pp. 998-999.
5. ^ ^{A b} Casale SA: Ammonia - The development of technology. Retrieved August 27, 2019.