Ping
Since the invention of the original process by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the 1920s, many refinements and adjustments have been made. The term "Fischer-Tropsch" now applies to a wide variety of similar processes (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis or Fischer-Tropsch chemistry). Fischer and Tropsch filed a number of patents, e.g., US patent no. 1,746,464, applied 1926, published 1930.[8] It was commercialized in Germany in 1936. Being petroleum-poor but coal-rich, in Germany the FT-process was used by Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II to produce ersatz (German: substitute) fuels. F-T production accounted for an estimated 9% of German war production of fuels and 25% of the automobile fuel.[9]
The United States Bureau of Mines, in a program initiated by the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act, employed seven Operation Paperclip synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer-Tropsch plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.[10][9]
In Britain, Alfred August Aicher obtained several patents for improvements to the process in the 1930s and 1940s.[11] Aicher's company was named Synthetic Oils Ltd. (Now based in Canada.)
Why reinvent the wheel? Instead of doing R&D on optics packages and sensors they waste all this money on something to replace what we know works 100% of the time. Idiots!
It may be death from the sky, but at least it’s eco-friendly death from the sky.