Fischer-Tropsch Process

The Fischer-Tropsch process is a set of chemical reactions that converts syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, into liquid hydrocarbons using a metal catalyst at temperatures of roughly 150 to 300 degrees Celsius and pressures of one to several tens of atmospheres. The German chemists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed the process in 1925 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr, filing a U.S. patent in 1926 that was granted in 1930, and the German company Brabag began commercial production using the process in 1936. Nazi Germany relied heavily on Fischer-Tropsch fuel during the Second World War, when it supplied roughly nine percent of the country's total wartime fuel and about a quarter of its automobile fuel, since the process could turn coal, and later natural gas or biomass, into synthetic liquid fuel.