U.S. Bureau of Mines Fischer-Tropsch Pilot-Plant Studies of Oil-Circulation Processes
In 1951, a good year, US Bureau of Mines employees reported important advances in the technology for converting Coal into liquid fuels.
Instead of speaking out about it, as they should have, from the steps of a Capital building, in Washington, DC, or Charleston, WV, however, they traveled all the way to an obscure conference in a, as far as the Heartland of US Coal Country would be concerned, very obscure place to deliver the news that US tax dollars had helped to improve the process of making liquid fuels from Coal.
The excerpts:
"Title: U.S. Bureau of Mines Fischer-Tropsch Pilot-Plant Studies of Oil-Circulation Processes
Authors: H.E. Benson, J.H. Crowell, et. al.
Source: 3rd World Petroleum Congress, May 28 - June 6, 1951 , The Hague, the Netherlands
Abstract: Fischer-'I'ropsch process development is summarized, and the essential features of the German fixed-bed system, the hot-gas recycle and oil-circulation processes, and the oil-slurry and fluidized-bed system are briefly described. Most Bureau of Mines pilot-plant experimentation has been directed toward development of the oil-circulation process because a simple converter design could be used and precise operating control attained in such a system. Several moderately successful experiments were made that employed a cooling oil circulating through a fixed catalyst bed. However, shut-downs were necessitated after three or four months of synthesis because the catalyst particles became cemented together and an excessive pressure drop developed across the catalyst bed. This problem of catalyst cementing was circumvented by employing a moving bed of catalyst in which lifting action of the circulating oil was used to expand the catalyst bed and keep the particles in motion. Details of induction and synthesis operations, operating data, analyses of gas and liquid streams, tables of calculated yields, and a typical product distribution are given for various experiments. Calculated yields of gasoline and Diesel products resulting from thermal and catalytic cracking of heavy distillate and wax are given, as well as characterization of the gasoline and Diesel oil. Bureau of Mines, Bruceton, Pennsylvania; Research and Development Branch, Office of Synthetic Liquid Fuels."
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Our ever-diplomatic and discrete US Guv employees did manage to avoid offensive use of the four-letter word "Coal", in this presentation to a "Petroleum Congress", although the phrase "Fischer-Tropsch" should have been a dead giveaway. And, we doubt that our domestic press was much interested in, what was then, an obscure oil industry conference held in the still-rebuilding, war-torn home of the Dutch.
Make no mistake, though, they were, in 1951, liquefying Coal using advances on the "essential features of the German fixed-bed system".