Uh, nope, gotta disagree, Biothomas. Coke's secret formula is NOT patented. The whole purpose of patents is to disclose the process to encourage "the progress of science" in exchange for protection of the patented process/invention from unlicensed competition.
When someone invents something, they have the option of keeping it a trade secret and not patenting it, or disclosing the details and taking out a patent. Which course is taken depends upon whether they think they can guard the secret well enough and whether they think the idea/invention CAN be patented.
And I have to disagree about "not a lot of details." They told ME what they did with sufficient detail in the second paragraph. But then, I'm a techie, ie a chemist, so telling me that they ". . . developed a refinery-based proprietary technology it calls NExBTL for the high-pressure hydrogenation of fatty acids . . ." and ". . . The process can use a flexible input of any vegetable oil or animal fat and produce a product with characteristics similar to Fischer-Tropsch output . . ." is all the detail I need to know.
To translate to common English, what they said was that the process requires an industrial infrastructure beyond the capacity of the backyard tinkerer.
It should be noted that there are even better alternative processes, including one developed at the University of Wisconsin that uses ANY and ALL carbohydrates as feed stock, and which works as well with yard waste and spoiled hay, thus not needing oil crops at all.
