It doesn’t make sense for cars (electricity is a practical alternative and if you wanted to use chemical fuels you would synthesize methane or 1-butanol, dimethyl ether or some other single-entity fuel for which the production process can be optimized)

Aviation is 30-40 years behind in fuels (they still use leaded gas.). The kind of Fischer-Tropsch chemistry that these guys are messing with has been basically abandoned for automotive use but is still being pursued for jet fuel because they are afraid to use any fuel which isn’t identical to existing fuels in composition…

Traditionally these processes start with a stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide which can be made from coal or methane, the economics are gawdawful because the reactions that build up hydrocarbons and break them down have to be closely balanced —- polyethylene formation can be explosive, methane forms quickly if the temperature is too high. What it means is you have a big machine (high capital cost) that makes just a trickle of fuel. In the green era people like these guys are mixing up the chemistry so you can put CO2 in instead.

I have been thinking about how you would make plastic membranes from asteroid materials, we think some asteroids have something that is basically coal and the head end would turn that into ‘petrochemicals’ and might have a lot in common with fuel synthesizers… A lot of chemical processes will create waste CO2 which is precious in that context and has to be recycled.