Regeneration of zinc halide catalyst used in the hydrocracking of polynuclear hydrocarbons - Patent 4081400
We remind you of an earlier dispatch, posted February 3, 2010, on the West Virginia Coal Association's R&D Blog as "Conoco Patents Consol CoalTL Process"
As we have been reporting, Consol researchers were, separately, near the end of the FMC COED project, which was funded by the US Government, working on their own coal liquefaction technology, the Zinc Chloride, or Zinc Halide, Coal Liquefaction Process, also with US Government support, under USDOE Contract EX-76-C-01-1743.
That tax-supported research and development also led to a somewhat obscure, dare we say camouflaged, US coal-to-liquid conversion technology Patent, now owned and unused by Consol's Big Oil parent, Continental Oil Company, aka Conoco.
Read carefully the following excerpts from the enclosed link:
"Regeneration of zinc halide catalyst used in the hydrocracking of polynuclear hydrocarbons
United States Patent 4081400
Date: March 28, 1978
Inventor: Everett Gorin
Assignee: Continental Oil Company
Improved recovery of spent molten zinc halide hydro-cracking catalyst is achieved in the oxidative vapor phase regeneration thereof by selective treatment of the zinc oxide carried over by the effluent vapors from the regeneration zone with hydrogen halide gas under conditions favoring the reaction of the zinc oxide with the hydrogen halide, whereby regenerated zinc halide is recovered in a solids-free state with little loss of zinc values."
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First of all, we're certain Everett Gorin is the "E. Gorin" who, as we earlier reported, delivered the report on coal liquefaction, "A Synthetic Fuels Process", for Consolidation Coal Company, to the 8th World Petroleum Congress, in Moscow in 1971.
And, though stated to be living in California at the time this patent was issued, he once worked at Consol's Library, PA, facility. He was, or still is, in fact, primarily a Coal scientist.
Moreover, we submit, raw liquids derived from some primary processes of Coal conversion would qualify as "polynuclear hydrocarbons".
In any case, this patent is a refinement of the Zinc Halide CoalTL process, about which we have earlier reported, and for which, as we've documented, Continental Oil, Conoco, now holds the patent rights.
"The regeneration of Zinc Halide catalyst" would improve the efficiency and decrease the costs of this particular Coal liquefaction technology; and, more significantly to us, it demonstrates how advanced and sophisticated the technology for Coal liquefaction became, with documented US Government support, in the latter half of the last century.
We all should start asking why that development seemed to stop; and, why none of the advanced Coal liquefaction technology that was developed, with US Government tax money support, was ever reduced to practice in a way that benefited the US tax payers.
Not only should we ask those questions, we should demand answers, good answers, to them.
