[mogadsheu]

Finally, an expert! I’m not, although I’ve been involved in energy for a while now.

I believe the Germans made synfuels towards the end of WWII using Fischer Tropsch when they were running low on conventional fuels. What tech is new about this project, besides the energy source?

[dredmorbius]

Germany, during WWII, and South Africa's SASOL since the 1970s:

https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasifi...

[jsilence]

Two decades and some ago a german company named Choren also produced SunDiesel in a similar process. They shut down this line of work quite some time ago. Not feasible.

[jabl]

They made synfuels from coal, which contains a lot of, uh, coal. So no need to capture it from the air. They didn't worry about CO2 pollution back then.

[dredmorbius]

For fuel synthesis, you have two principle processes: carbon sourcing, and actually sythesizing the fuel.

Once you've got the coal sourced, most of the rest of the WWII process is directly applicable to modern carbon-capture methods.