SECTION I(b)
I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE A.G.
I.G. had done considerable work on Fe catalyst prior to 1938 and a good part of this work was made available during the USAC meeting in 1938 The work was carried out separately in Leuna and Ludwigshafen. The Leuna group, headed by Dr. Herold, deviated from the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis and developed the Synol process for the direct production of alcohols. In Ludwigshafen, Dr. Michael (Under Dr. Pier) continued work on gas recirculation and liquid phase operation while Dr. Duftschmid (under Dr. Mueller-Conradi) also developed a liquid phase process. Dr. Scheuermann worked on precipitated Fe catalysts.
I.G. had also worked on cobalt catalyst prior to 1939 but apparently only to substantiate Ruhrchemie’s claims. Even at the present time, the I.G. Oxo-synthesis was based on the standard cobalt catalyst of RCH.
In the iron field, however, I.G.’s work was original, particularly their work on fused and sintered catalyst of the ammonia type, with which I.G. had some 25 years of practical experience. It has been claimed that thus had to operate at higher temperatures. Nevertheless I.G. was able to use their “WK 17”, a sintered catalyst in the synol process, which operates at very low temperatures.
I.G. has done much work to develop methods for carrying out the synthesis in systems other than the plate or tube type reactor. None of these processes had reached commercialization. This may be due to the war and to the fact that I.G. with their high pressure hydrogenation had found better means to produce high quality motor and aircraft fuels and thus had only limited interest in the process.
The Synol unit, however, had been developed to a point where construction of a large plant had actually been decided upon. This is described in Section II, of this report.