Synthetic fuel from coal During his habilitation, techniques for the high-pressure and high-temperature chemistry of carbon-containing substrates were developed, yielding a patent on the
Bergius process in 1913. In this process
liquid hydrocarbons used as
synthetic fuel are produced by
hydrogenation of
lignite (brown coal). He developed the process well before the commonly known
Fischer–Tropsch process.
Theodor Goldschmidt invited him to build an industrial plant at his factory the
Th. Goldschmidt AG in 1914. The production began only in 1919, after the
World War I ended, when the need for fuel was already declining. The technical problems,
inflation and the constant criticism of
Franz Joseph Emil Fischer, which changed to support after a personal demonstration of the process, made the progress slow and Bergius sold his patent to
BASF, where
Carl Bosch worked on it. Before
World War II several plants were built with an annual capacity of 4 million tons of synthetic fuel.
Sugar from wood The hydrolysis of
wood to produce
sugar for industrial use became a hard task for Bergius. After he moved to Heidelberg he started to improve the process and planned an industrial scale production. The high costs and technical problems nearly led him to bankruptcy. A
bailiff followed Bergius to
Stockholm to get the money from his
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931. The
autarky movement before the
World War II boosted the process and several plants were built. Bergius moved to
Berlin where he was only marginally involved in the development. While he was in
Bad Gastein Austria, his laboratory and his house were destroyed by an
air raid. The rest of the war he stayed in Austria.
International engagement After the war his citizenship was called into question because of his collaboration with
IG Farben, resulting in his departure from Germany to work as an adviser in
Italy,
Turkey,
Switzerland and
Spain. He emigrated to
Argentina, where he worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Industry. He died in
Buenos Aires on 30 March 1949, and is buried in the Cementerio Alemán next to
La Chacarita Cemetery. ==Awards==