The Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program was a program run by the United States Bureau of Mines to create the technology to produce synthetic fuel from coal. It was initiated in 1944 during World War II. The Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act approved on April 5, 1944 authorized the use of $30 million over a five year period for - ...the construction and operation of demonstration plants to produce synthetic liquid fuels from coal, oil shales, agricultural and forestry products, and other substances, in order to aid the prosecution of the war, to conserve and increase the oil resources of the Nation, and for other purposes.
Fischer-Tropsch process (fish'ur-trÅpsh) [key], method for the synthesis of hydrocarbons and other aliphatic compounds. Synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is reacted in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst; much heat is evolved, and such products as methane, synthetic gasoline and waxes, and alcohols are made, with water or carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct. An important source of the hydrogen–carbon monoxide gas mixture is the gasification of coal (see water gas). The process is named after F. Fischer and H. Tropsch, the German coal researchers who discovered it in 1923.
As a routine search string will show that the Nazis and Imperial Japan used synthetic fuels to supplement for petroleum sources in lost areas of conquest during World War II, why hasn't a Manhattanesque Project been pursued since the mid-1970's by the U. S. Government using our own vast coal fields as a new source for petroleum type fuels?
Oil Producer Lobbyists, special interest groups, environMENTALists, U. S. Congress malaise ...
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