Chemistry and Industrial Synthesis

By 1900, producer gas had been widely deployed in almost every corner of the industrial sectors in England from electricity generation, mechanical power, boiler heating, fueling kilns and furnaces, large and small, to iron and steel making. The emergence of central gas stations for the generation of electricity and the demands for large gas engines by the iron and steel industry in Germany called for large gas producers. For gas producer or gasification in general at that time, its further development appears in needs of an additional support from chemistry so to have a fundamental understanding of what happens inside a producer or a gasifier. Here, it is the acceptance of the long awaited molecular theory that makes it possible on a micro-level to decipher the chemistry inside a gasifier and furthermore eventually opened up a completely new industry that would provide a huge opportunity for gasification to play, the catalytic synthetic industry.