United States Patent: 4157291
In this dispatch we submit yet another decades-old United States Patent, held by yet another then-major oil company, that confirms the reality of Coal liquefaction technology, not by describing the ways in which Coal can be transformed into liquid fuel, but, as with other, similar, oil industry patents we've recently brought to your attention, such as Esso/Exxon's US Patent 35114394, by establishing a technique to recycle or renew the catalysts employed for the liquefaction of Coal.
Brief comment follows excerpts from
"United States Patent 4,157,291 - Process for Extending Life of Coal Liquefaction Catalyst
June 5, 1979
Inventor: John A. Paraskos and Herman Taylor (Pittsburgh, PA)
Assignee: Gulf Research & Development Company (Pittsburgh, PA)
Abstract: A catalytic process for liquefying coal wherein the life of the catalyst is extended by periodic screening to remove ash-containing particulate matter.
Claims: A process for liquefying coal comprising passing an ash-containing coal-solvent slurry and hydrogen through a heating zone and a catalytic hydrogenation zone, said hydrogenation zone containing particles of hydrogenation catalyst comprising Group VI and Group VIII metals, said particles of catalyst being cemented with coal and ash to form a continuous solid mass during said process, terminating said process upon reduction in catalytic hydrogenation activity, removing said catalyst as a continuous ash and coal-containing solid mass from said hydrogenation zone, crumbling said continuous solid mass into a crumbled mass comprising relatively small and relatively catalyst-free ash and coal-containing particulate impurities, said catalyst free ash particulate impurities being small compared to the size of said particles of catalyst said crumbling step occuring substantially without size reduction of said catalyst particles, separating said relatively small ash and coal-containing particulate impurities from said catalyst particles and returning said catalyst particles substantially without size reduction to said process.
This invention relates to a process for extending the life of a catalyst in a process for converting ash-containing raw coal to deashed coal liquids."
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Gulf Oil's Coal conversion technology seems to require free Hydrogen in it's execution, and there are now, as we've documented, a number of other, perhaps better, ways to go about the hydrogenation of Coal.
But: The fact that technical issues such as those illustrated by this US patent had been identified and addressed just serves to illustrate, serves as more evidence, that, decades ago, we did know how to convert our abundant Coal into liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Yet, we did not; choosing, instead, to pour vast amounts of our national wealth into the treasuries of largely unfriendly foreign oil powers, and, to fight some very, in terms of lives and money, expensive wars in essentially hostile oil-producing regions of the world.
