United States Patent: 4076612
The landlocked British colony in Africa once known as Rhodesia, subsequent to gaining independence, renamed itself Zimbabwe in 1980 - two years after they patented, in the United States, their own technology for converting Coal into liquid fuels.
Since Rhodesia and their neighbor, South Africa, endured similar international sanctions during the colonial and apartheid eras, and shared a similar heritage, we'll presume them to have cooperated on some issues of defense, economy and technology.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that Rhodesia developed their own process, as South Africa did on an extensive basis through SASOL, to convert Coal into liquid fuels.
It is, though, somewhat surprising, that they were allowed to, and did, file for and receive a United States Patent on their own process for Coal liquefaction.
As evidenced by the above link and following excerpts:
"United States Patent 4,076,612 - Obtaining Liquid Fuel From Solid Carbonaceous Feed Stocks
Date: February 28, 1978
Inventor: John Hollaway, Rhodesia
Assignee: Rio Tinto, Ltd.; Salisbury, Rhodesia
Abstract: A process for forming a fuel-oil from coal. The coal is treated in a low temperature carbonisation retort to give coke, coal-gas and tar-oil. The coke is converted to water-gas which is then synthesised in a Fischer-Tropsch synthesiser to form fuel-oil. The tar-oil is hydrogenated in a hydro-treater by hydrogen produced from the coal-gas. Hydrogen is produced from coal-gas either in a thermal cracking chamber or by reforming the methane content to hydrogen and passing the resultant hydrogen/carbon monoxide mixture through a water-gas shift reactor and a carbon dioxide scrubber.
Claims: ... a process of obtaining hydrocarbon fuel-oils from coal, comprising the steps of:
(a) treating the coal by low temperature carbonization ... to form tar-oil, coal-gas and coke;
(b) passing said coke formed at low temperature direct to a water-gas reaction and producing a gas mixture containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide from the coke by said water-gas reaction;
(c) synthesizing the gas mixture into fuel-oil by a Fischer-Tropsch type synthesis;
(d) treating the coal-gas to form hydrogen and carbon monoxide;
(e) generating a hydrogen stream from the gas produced in step (d) by passing the hydrogen and carbon monoxide through a a water-gas shift reactor and a carbon dioxide scrubber.
(f) adding part of the gas from step (e) to step (c); and
(g) hydrogenating the tar-oil with the remainder of the gas from step (e)"
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There is quite a lot more to it, of course. But, we end our excerpts here, with those selected passages, only to illustrate, as we will in future dispatches further document, that the Hydrogen needed to hydrogenate the primarily carbonaceous Coal feed, to form hydrocarbons via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, can itself be generated as a step in the overall Coal conversion process.
But, like Germany and Japan in WWII, and like South Africa, herein it's seen that an isolated nation, struggling under international economic sanctions, figured out that they could make the liquid hydrocarbon fuels they needed out of Coal.