Bergius

Only These Three Things Can Halt Oil's Advance

There is something else that could throw an instant reverse into the price of oil: Information, and somebody acting on the information. Here's the first part:

Did you know that wood waste (slash, pine beatle kill, mill waste, etc) can be turned into commercial quality liquid fuel (gasoline, avgas, diesel, heating fuel, etc) through a fairly simple refining processs known as Bergius Hydrogenation? Germany developed the process in WW2 and it was later advanced in the USA (using German scientists) in the late 1940's. In 1949 the head of one of the U.S. test plants said he could produce all the commercial grade unleaded 87 octane gasoline America wanted for 1.5 cents per gallon before taxes and profit.

Oil was cheap and plentiful then. The technology was incorporated into the modern day cracking process where 4 barrels of gasoline plus many other related products are produced from 1 barrel of oil. Actually you don't need oil. Any compound containing carbon can be hydrogenated into gasoline, heating or diesel fuel. The Bergius process will convert 99% of carbon into fuel. This means that not only wood waste but things like used tires, plastic bags and household trash could also be converted. Note that this process does not produce an alternate fuel. It produces exactly the same fuel as that refined from oil.

I know this process works. I had a forest company and a mill in the 70's. I built a stage-1 wood-waste converter and ran a stationary 4-cylinder datsun gas engine directly from the output. This engine powered all the hydraulics at the mill.