science · 11 October 1884 · 140 years ago
birth
Born 11 Oct 1884; died 30 Mar 1949 at age 64.
Friedrich Karl Rudolf Bergius was a German chemist who invented a process to convert coal dust and hydrogen directly into gasoline and lubricating oils without isolating intermediate products (Stuttgart, 25 Jun 1921). Bergius succeeded, during distillation of coal, in forcing hydrogen under high pressure to combine chemically with the coal, transforming more carbon from the coal into oils than is possible with conventional distillation. To solve heat distribution and temperature regulation problems, Bergius invented treating a mixture of pulverized coal in oil with the gas under high pressure. For his work in developing the chemical high pressure hydrogenation method necessary for this process he shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Carl Bosch of Germany.
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