CTL Products - KY & AL


We're sending this report along to confirm, if more confirmation was needed, that our USDOE did have at least two coal-to-liquid plants up and running in the fairly recent past - in addition to the ones founded by various entities in the 40's and early 50's, which used captured German technology, and the Ohio Valley Synfuels plant in the 1970's.
 
There doesn't appear to be anything too revelatory in this entry, represented by the abstract below. In sum, two different processes for converting coal into liquid fuels work, and either way you go about it you'll get similar hydrocarbon liquids.
 
Of course, we're not getting any of those now, but...

"Curt M. White, Mildred B. Perry, Charles E. Schmidt, Nasrin Behmanesh and David T. Allen

Division of Coal Science, US Department of Energy, Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center, PO Box 10940, Pittsburgh, PA 15236, USA

Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 09924, USA


Received 15 January 1987; 
revised 11 May 1987. 
Available online 11 August 2003.

Abstract

Coal liquefaction products from the H-coal (Kentucky) and the Wilsonville (Alabama) Integrated two-stage liquefaction processes were separated into narrow-boiling distillates. The Wilsonville product was from the first stage. Information resulting from elemental analysis, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H n.m.r.), low-voltage, highresolution mass spectrometery (LVHRMS), infrared spectroscopy (i.r.) and open-column preparative liquid chromatography were obtained for each distillate. The analytical data were used to estimate the concentrations of the major functional groups in the distillates. The results indicated that the structure and functionality of the molecular constituents of the two sets of distillates boiling in the same temperature range were similar. Structural differences appear to be primarily related to the concentrations of alkylated aromatics and saturates."

It's real, and we've known how to do it for a long time. Why haven't we been told?