The only major operating coal gasification/liquefaction plant is located at Sasolburg, South Africa. The plant was originally designed and built in the early-to-mid 1950's. It was based on the then state-of-the-art Lurgi gravitating bed gasification process and the Fisher-Tropsch process. During the past 25 years, the design of the Lurgi reactors has undergone four significant modifications. The fourth generation of gasifiers are being ,installed in the new plant at Sasol II, east of Johannesburg. A fifth generation Lurgi reactor has been tested and will form the design basis for Sasol III, currently being planned. The original Fisher-Tropsch liquefaction process was based on a fixed-bed, iron carbide pelleted catalyst. This produced too high a molecular weight range of molecules, mainly due to the long liquid/H 2 /C0/catalyst contact times. A second, fluidized-bed, liquefier was added more recently. This gives a distinctly lower molecular weight range of molecules, i.e. higher gasoline and diesel fractions with lower hard waxes. There is a fairly extensive search for continually more specific catalysts and process design options in both fixed- and fluidized-bed configurations. There is no apparent effort to develop the technology of homogeneous catalysis or supported homogeneous catalysts.