We have many times referred to the German scientists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch.
They developed an indirect process for the conversion of Coal into liquid hydrocarbons which was so successful that it, along with the Bergius process, which, as we've documented, won the Nobel Prize for it's inventor in 1931, fueled the Axis armies during Word War II with Coal-derived liquids to such an extent that, as we have also documented, the multiple Coal-to-Liquid factories in both Germany and Japanese-occupied Asia became high-priority targets of Allied strategic bombing.
In fact, among Coal-to-liquid technology authorities and fans, the term "Fischer-Tropsch" is used almost synonymously with Coal conversion. And, we believe, that, in at least one of their Coal conversion factories, South Africa's Sasol still makes liquid transportation fuels out of Coal using a somewhat more advanced version of the original Fischer-Tropsch process.
We have also cited several authoritative references, including, again, the United States Patent Office, documenting that technologies had been developed by the early 1930's for the conversion of Methane into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
One of those early Methane conversion patents was awarded to German inventors, and we described it as a "telegraphing" of the Axis synthetic fuel punch.
That synthetic fuel punch was no more openly "telegraphed" than when our own, United States Patent Office, in 1930, awarded a US Patent to Fischer and Tropsch for what we contend to be their indirect process of converting Coal into liquid hydrocarbons.
And, we think very, very significantly, Fischer and Tropsch cite, in their enclosed United States Patent for the conversion of Coal into liquid hydrocarbons, the winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Paul Sabatier, and his invention of a process that converts, that recycles, Carbon Dioxide into Methane.
Comment follows our very brief excerpts from:
"United States Patent 1,746,464 - Process for the Production of Paraffin-Hydrocarbons
February 1930
Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch - Germany
It is generally known that the oxides of carbon can be converted into methane by catalytic reduction (see Sabatier, Die Katalyse in der organischen Chemie, Leipzig, 1914) ... . ... (we) now have found that, instead of methane, its homologues (and) higher homologues which are easily liquefiable (or) liquid ... are obtained ... ."
----------
We have found no mention in the full patent, as in some of the far more recent US Coal conversion patents we have documented for you, that are owned by various Big Oil companies, of the offensive, four-letter word, Coal.
Nor is the term "synthesis gas" ever used.
At that time of Great Depression and simmering international conflicts, however, motives other than concern for petroleum profits might have figured into concerns over this CoalTL patent's wording and composition.