The first pyrolysis plants were built in Russia (in Kiev and Kazan) in the 1970s. Pyrolysis was mainly applied to kerosine to produce gas for lighting. Later it was proved that aromatic hydrocarbons could be released from the resin produced by pyrolysis. Pyrolysis was widely developed during the First World War, when there was a great demand for toluene, raw material for TNT production.
After the invention of the process by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, who worked at the Kaiser Wilheim Institute in the 1920s, many improvements and corrections were made and the name "Fischer-Tropsch" is now applied to a large number of similar processes (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis or Fischer-Tropsch chemistry)
The process was invented in oil-poor but coal-rich Germany in 1919.
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