Posted by David Sherman on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 12:48PM :
In Reply to: Bio diesel? posted by Robert A in NJ on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 7:03AM :
They make most of their diesel from coal, and we probably will too once the price of petroleum gets high enough and stays high. In WWII, Germany kept the Luftwaffe flying on synthetic gasoline made via the Fischer-Tropsch process from coal, since their oil imports were cut off, but they had lots of coal. The technology is well-known; it's just a matter of investing in building the plants to do it. The basic chemistry is to make hydrocarbon chains by reacting carbon with steam at high temperature in the presence of a catalyst. The resulting liquid hydrocarbon mixture can then be refined like petroleum. I recently read that the DoD has launched a serious study into building synthetic oil plants to supply military needs in the event that we can't get petroleum.