The F-T Process

In the 1940’s, Hitler’s war machine ran largely on synthetic liquid fuel created from coal, which unlike petroleum, was abundant in German territory. And when Patton’s fuel supply ran out, his troops advanced by siphoning the synthetic fuel from captured German vehicles (retrieved on 10/2/06 from U.S. Dept. of Energy website).

The Fischer-Tropsch process was one of the methods used by Hitler’s engineers to create petroleum-style liquid fuels, but was still in its early stages at the time. But even though Hitler depended heavily on these synthetic fuels, according to historian Peter W. Becker,
“The magnitude of the problem facing this country has another dimension that should not be underestimated. At the peak of their synthetic fuel production in 1943, when half of their economy and their armed forces ran on synthetic fuel, the Germans produced 36,212,400 barrels of fuel a year. At current rates of imported fuel alone, that quantity in this country would last all of four and one-half days!” (Air University Review, July-August 1981)

And while today, the F-T process has been refined and improved, a major consideration would be the greenhouse gas emissions involved in converting large masses of coal into liquid fuels.

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