Use Le Chatelier’s principle to explain what would happen if you increased the pressure of the Haber process reaction.

Answer 1

The Haber process is an industrial process that is used to produce ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. The reaction involved is exothermic, and so according to Le Chatelier's principle, if the pressure of the reaction is increased, the system will respond by favoring the side with fewer moles of gas.

In this case, the Haber process produces two moles of gas from four moles of reactants. Therefore, increasing the pressure of the reaction will favor the side with fewer moles of gas, which is the reactant side. This means that the equilibrium will shift towards the reactants, leading to an increase in the concentration of nitrogen and hydrogen gases.

To counteract this shift, the forward reaction will proceed to produce more ammonia to balance out the increased pressure. As a result, the equilibrium constant for the Haber process will remain the same, but the yield of ammonia will increase. This increase in yield can be beneficial for industrial applications as it means more ammonia can be produced for a given amount of reactants.