Mond, Ludwig (1839-1909)

German-born British chemist who invented a process for recovering sulphur during the manufacture of alkali. He gave his name to a method of extracting nickel from nickel carbonyl, one of its volatile organic compounds. His son Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett (1868-1930), was a founder of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Mond was born in Kassel and studied chemistry at Marburg and Heidelberg. In 1859, working in a small soda works near Kassel, he initiated the new process for the recovery of sulphur. This gained him an invitation from a Lancashire industrial chemist, and Mond moved to the UK 1862. In 1873, he helped to found the firm of Brunner, Mond, and Company, which pioneered the British chemical industry. In 1879, Mond became interested in the production of ammonia. One outcome was the development of the Mond producer gas process, in which carbon monoxide and hydrogen are produced by alternately passing air and steam over heated coal or coke (and the hydrogen used to convert nitrogen into ammonia). By the early 1900s, Mond's Dudley Port Plant in Staffordshire was using 3 million tonnes of coal each year to make producer gas (Mond gas).