Most of the interest is in making diesel using a technology known as Fischer-Tropsch, for the German chemists who demonstrated it in the 1920s. Daily consumption of diesel and heating oil, which are nearly identical substances, amounts to more than $500 million. The gasoline market is more than twice as large. The process to convert coal to diesel can also be adapted to make gasoline. The technology was used during World War II in Germany, and in the 1980s by South Africa when the world shunned its apartheid regime. Now Rentech is preparing to use an updated version of the process...
Robert Williams, a senior research scientist at Princeton University, said "it's a step backward" to operate a plant like Rentech's without capturing the carbon. "It almost doubles the emission rate," he said.
