116a.    --------------. [AYRES, E] Synthetic Liquid Fuels – When and How?  Petrol. Processing, vol. 7, 1952, pp. 41-44.

                   Production of liquid fuel from coal and oil shale is an inevitable part of the future industrial picture.  From our present knowledge of synthetic fuels, oil shale shows the best immediate promise; exploitation can take place today with only nominal operating loss and by 1965 on a profit basis in direct competition with natural petroleum.  But the future fuel economy depends upon coal and its wide-scale utilization by 1980 and as the main source of fuel energy by the year 2000.  This position, however, will not come about by hydrogenation; unless radically new ideas are born coal hydrogenation as a whole is dead and will remain so, only parts of the process will remain applicable.  If coal were to be converted to liquid fuel without regard to other aspects of the energy problem, use would probably be made of a modified Fischer-Tropsch synthesis since this appears to be cheaper and more flexible than hydrogenation.  Most favorable economics should come from a highly integrated energy industry which would supply not only increasing amounts of liquid fuel but also even more rapidly increasing amounts of electric power.  Coal would be mechanically mined at low cost, crushed, cleaned and transported by pipeline to locations of adequate water supplies, and there continuously distilled to yield a maximum amount of tar, some aromatic chemical intermediates, and fine char.  The tar would be hydrogenated to liquid fuels, the char converted to liquid fuels and aliphatic intermediates by the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis or burned under boilers for generation of electric power.  The course of production of petroleum is estimated and the general shape of the world’s future annual production curve is predicted.  On the basis of ultimate producible reserves of 1,000 billion bbl., it is estimated that the peak of world production is likely to come about in 1985.