In 1852 Alfred went back to Russia to work with his father as the Russian Navy had placed big orders for the Crimean War (1853-1856). After the war ended and conditions changed, Immanuel Nobel experienced another bankruptcy and moved back to Stockholm with his family. Two of his sons remained in Russia and developed very successful careers in the oil industry.
Back in Stockholm, Alfred, his father and Alfred 's younger brother Emil started a laboratory in 1859 where they started to do experiments with the explosive liquid nitroglycerin. Alfred saw that the advantages nitroglycerin had over gun powder could be used in a commercial and technical way. Over the years they had several explosions in the laboratory; a big one in 1864 killed the younger brother Emil and several other people. The city of Stockholm enforced laws that experiments with explosives could not be made within the city limits of Stockholm.
This did not stop Alfred; he moved his laboratory to a barge on the Lake of Malaren. Alfred had by now realized that there were safety problems to be solved; he had to find a safe way to transport the explosive as well as a method to have control of the detonation of nitroglycerin. In 1864 the company Nitroglycerin AB was founded and a mass production of nitroglycerin started, and the following year,1865, he opened up the first factory abroad in Hamburg. Alfred still worked on the safety issue of the explosive, and in 1866 he successfully mixed nitroglycerin with silica which turned the liquid into a paste.
