MOTOR FUEL FROM COAL

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 8 January 1927, Page 15

MOTOR FUEL FROM COAL

TN\ ENTOR TEI.I.S OK I’ROCEKS. (By Science Sen ice.) A motorised Europe, in spite of the scarcity of oil. w-Ls, and the consequent high price of “gas” on that continent, is he hi out as a possibility as the result of researches on processes fur making a practicable motor fuel out of soft coal, which have bee in going on tor nearly a quaiiter of a century in Germany and Krai ice. Professor Franz Fischer, director of the institute of Coal Research, Muelhoim-Ruhr, Germany, a eader in the search for a practicable synthetic motor fuel, spoke at Pittsburgh on November 17, before the meeting or the International Could erne on Bituminous Coal, telling ot the petroleum-ike products he has been able to obtain by subjecting water-gas to pressure and moderate temperature, in the presence of finelydivided iron or' cobalt. Professor Fischer uses as raw material the same mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide familiar in this country ag a part of most city gas, under the ilia me of “water-gas.” This is made by passing steam over glowing coke. The gas mixture thus produced has high fuel value, but cannot be reduced to liquid form except at extreuiely low temperature. How to build those small molecules into larger ones, which would be ’liquid instead of ga» at ordinary temperatures, and still be useful as an engine fuel, was the problem confronting the investigator. He solved it by the use of what the chemist calls catalyzers, that is substances which in some manner speed up chemical reactions without, themselves entering into the compounds which they call into being. In this ease Professor Fischer used finely divided eabolt and iron ; an earlier investigator, he .said, had used the allied metal nickel. With these chemical middlemen present, and using moderately high pressures and some heat, he has obtained three different classes of compounds. Tlie first of these, “synthol,” its a mixture of about a score of inflammable compounds, including a .number of the higher alcohols, ketones, and esters, as wall as organic acids and aldehydes. This lias considerable value as a fuel. By varying the process, he has been able to" obtain a second product, methanol. which is pure synthetic wood alcohol. Other investigators also have obtained methanol ; but though it is high’y useful in the arts and industries, it has less value as a fuel than the retroieum-like products. A third .procluct. “gasol,” most recently obtained, is of the nature of an artificial benzine, which again has high fuel value. These rsearches have been carried out on a technical scale, and it has been proved possible to obtain motor fuel from soft coal in commercial quantities, without troublesome by-proclucts to find markets for. But as yet the process is to costly to compete with imported petroleum fuels. As the latter become scarcer and more expensive, and the technique of fuel synthesis from coal becomes more refined, it is expected that practical manufacture miay he undertaken.