We have reported on environmental cleanups underway at hazardous waste sites left behind by both coke oven batteries and early coal-to-liquid conversion facilities.
Those wastes didn't have to be dumped and left behind, but they unfortunately were.
We have reported that coke oven by-products, once treated as wastes, can be collected and utilized. Coke oven gas, as we've detailed, can be harvested and used, either directly as an auxiliary fuel for steel furnaces, or converted and condensed, synthesized, into liquid fuels.
Coke itself can be reformed with steam or super critical water, as we've documented, into liquid fuels, or fuel precursors that can even be fed as a co-stream into some conventional petroleum refineries.
Various "coal tars" are another residuum of coking operations that were frequently "dumped" into the environment, and they now, at many sites, present what are perceived to be great environmental hazards.
Those coal tars, where they are still contained at the older coal processing facilities in high-enough volumes and concentrations, are carbonaceous enough that they, too, could be harvested as part of a clean up, and transformed into liquid fuels - just, as we've earlier documented, some older coal mine waste accumulations can be processed, as is planned in Schuykill, PA, into liquid fuels and valuable organic chemicals.
We submit that, even at smaller facilities where the tar accumulations aren't great enough to enable profitable harvesting and conversion, any return realized by sales of fuel or chemicals produced from the waste would at least subsidize the costs of it's remediation.
And, in such a scenario, the waste coal tar would actually be cleaned up and removed from the environment. Most of the clean up plans being executed today only lead to the, hopefully, long-term stabilization of the wastes in-place. The current clean-ups don't actually "clean up"; and, the efforts represent only sunken cost. There is zero return on the sometimes massive investment.
If we were to focus our efforts on actually reclaiming the coal tar wastes with the intent of converting them into liquid fuels and chemicals, then we would get at least some return on the cost, and, perhaps more importantly, the objectionable wastes would actually be removed from the environment. It would be a true "clean-up", not just an expensive "containment".
The enclosed report indicates one avenue of approacht. An excerpt:
"Refined chemical oil (RCO), a coal tar by-product from metallurgical coke production, was blended with light cycle oil (LCO) from United Refinery, in a 1:1 ratio. The feeds were hydrotreated in the first stage to remove sulfur and nitrogen, then hydrogenated in a second stage to saturate the ring compounds, with fractionation taking place at various stages. The main variation in the process has been the location of the fractionation units, either before hydrotreatment, after the first stage, or after the second stage. When fractionating the product after both hydrotreatments, the co-processed material yields a product distribution of 6% gasoline, 80% jet fuel, 10% diesel and 4% fuel oil. The fuels produced are being tested in real systems."
Again, it's unlikely that such a recycling focus would actually make the clean up of old coke ovens and other coal processing facilities a profitable endeavor. But, if we had a coal-to-liquid conversion industry in place in the United States, then the collection and conversion of coke oven tar wastes would help at least to defray the costs of clean-up. And, an actual clean up, as opposed to an expensive containment in place, would be effected. We would be better off both economically and environmentally.