Process for making liquid fuels from coal
We have many times cited Consolidation Coal Company's research scientist, Everett Gorin, as in our report, recently posted on the West Virginia Coal Association R&D site, of his "Production of ... Liquid Fuels from Coal - United States Patent 3,018,241".
There are more than one dozen United States Patents that have been issued for developments in the technology for Coal conversion and liquefaction wherein Gorin is named as the inventor or co-inventor.
Most of those patents were assigned to his long-time employer, Consol, and, thus, now, Consol's new owner, Continental Oil. A few were assigned to another, apparently small-venture, Coal conversion company Gorin seemed to have had some involvement with: Socony Oil, of New York.
We're working to find out more about Socony. The name is an almost too-obvious acronym.
But, in the meantime, via the US Patent enclosed herein, Gorin reveals that, in 1964, if all factors were considered, liquid fuels could have been made at least as cheaply from Coal as from petroleum.
Comment follows brief excerpts, with technical details deliberately omitted, from:
"United States Patent 3,143,489 - Process for Making Liquid Fuels from Coal
Date: August, 1964
Inventor: Everett Gorin, Pittsburgh, PA
Assignee: Consolidation Coal Company, Pittsburgh
Abstract: This invention relates to a process for making liquid fuels from coal. More particularly, this invention relates to a process for making gasoline from coal at a cost which is equal to or less than the cost per gallon of similar gasoline made from petroleum.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of this invention to provide an economic process for the production of synthetic liquid fuels from coal such that the resulting fuels can be marketed on a competitive basis with similar fuels produced from petroleum."
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So, several years before some of us geezers could even get our driver's license learner's permits, we could have been buying about four gallons of Coal-derived gasoline per buck at the Esso station north of town, if our certifiably-flawed memory serves; and, presuming our expert US Patent Examiners to have been correct in their approval of Gorin's and Consol's 1964 claim, that "fuels from coal" could compete with "fuels produced from petroleum".
Now, with all that's happened in the nearly half-century since, wouldn't you think those same "fuels from coal" should just flat out beat the pants off of those "fuels produced from petroleum"?
