3529.     UNITED STATES NAVAL TECHNICAL MISSION TO JAPAN.  Japanese Fuels and Lubricants.  Article 7.  Progress in the Synthesis of Liquid Fuels From Coal.  X-38(N)-7, February 1946, 333 pp.; PB 58,701; BIOS Final Rept., 1305; PB 79,230; Fuel Abs., vol. 5, 1949, abs. 237; TOM Reel 232.

        This report, containing more than 30 separate papers, summarizes the findings of the Petroleum Section of the U. S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan relative to research and industrial development in the fields of high-pressure hydrogenation, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and low-temperature carbonization.  A general history (pp. 9-22, 321-326) of synthetic fuels program in Japan also is presented.  Numerous flowsheets, charts, and tables explain the extent and nature of the developments.  It is revealed that Japan, in its acute need for oil, plunged into industrial coal hydrogenation without acquiring an adequate background of experience with the intermediate-scale equipment.  Also materials, particularly heat-resistant alloy steels, were not available for the construction of suitable equipment, and manufacturing facilities did not exist for fabricating reaction vessels of proper size.  All evidence indicates that only 2 commercial-scale coal-hydrogenation plants were installed in Japan, and it may reasonably be interpreted that they did not have a perfected process.  Also, according to information obtained, only 5 Fischer-Tropsch plants were ever put under construction; of these, only 3 were placed in operation, the 2 others being under construction at the end of the war.  The Japanese 7-Year Plan called for production of 2,000,000 kl. of liquid fuels from coal by 1943, but actual production in the peak year 1944 was only 113,000 kl.