The phrase "much effort was put" is correct and usable in written English.
You could use it in a variety of situations to describe when someone put in a lot of effort, such as: "The team put in much effort to complete the project by the deadline, and it paid off."
In the paper, much effort was put on the divertor configuration and geometry.
So, during the war, much effort was put into improving the semiconductors, mostly silicon and germanium, used in crystal detectors.
Over the past few years, much effort was put into the determination of the chemical composition of a broad range of polyolefins as a function of molar mass using this technique (EPDM, LDPE, LLDPE).
"The one thing we don't think has been given much emphasis has been the fact that so much effort was put in by the local population.
One common problem with MOOCs is that they generate a great deal of initial interest but little completion; when thousands of students defect it makes the course look cheap, regardless of how much effort was put into it.
Mr. Leicester said that so much effort was put into setting up the Parliament and holding the elections to it that no time was put into structuring the government itself.
"So much effort is put into sustaining the stock market and home prices.
However, no matter how much effort is put into the architecture, it must eventually be translated into source code.
But perhaps the most interesting realisation is quite how much effort is put into the performance of presentation in the pursuit of winning work.
Before too much effort is put into the development of nanoparticles that might not work properly, it may be wise to spend more resources on studies of how they should de designed to be really useful for solving an identified problem.
In a conference where so much effort is put on the children, Sarah crossed the comfort bar.
