Hydrogenation of carbonaceous materials
We have previously cited United States Patents issued to German inventors in the years immediately prior to World War II, suggesting that the Axis powers were, in fact, telegraphing their synthetic fuels punch: their capability of manufacturing liquid fuels efficiently from Coal that became, as we've documented, a topic of great strategic importance for the Allied Command.
Herein is yet another of those prewar German Coal liquefaction technologies, one which echoes and reinforces a fact that we have, from latter-day United States sources, lately been documenting:
The Hydrogen needed to hydrogenate Coal, which is composed primarily of Carbon, in order to synthesize Hydrocarbons suitable for refining into replacements for common petroleum products, can be efficiently generated within the overall Coal conversion process through the interaction of specific metals, and salts of those metals, with Water.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 2,041,858 - Hydrogenation of Carbonaceous Materials
Date: May, 1936
Inventor: Theodor Pfirrman, Germany
Abstract: My invention relates to a method of hydrogenating carbonaceous materials. It is an improvement on the method described in the copending application for patent of the United States filed by Richard Bayer on September, 1926 ... according to which carbonaceous materials are heated in a closed vessel to the temperature where decomposition begins in the presence of a mixture of finely distributed, preferrably spongy iron and water.
In this process the hydrogenation proceeds sufficiently far only if the formation of hydrogen by the interaction of the iron and the water proceeds at least as quickly as the decomposition of the carbonaceous materials.
I have now found that salts having an acid reaction or splitting off acid are capable of influencing this reaction in a particularly efficient manner, thus the reaction is greatly accelerated by magnesium chloride, ammonium chloride, or by alkali borates.
(Pfirrman provides detailed examples of how to hydrogenate "brown coal tar", "wood meal", and "bituminous coal" - the "wood meal" suggesting, as we have from other sources documented, that properly-specified and appropriately-designed Coal-to-Liquid conversion facilities can employ other, Carbon-recycling and renewable botanical feed stocks, along with Coal.)
Claims: The method of hydrogenating carbonaceous materials comprising acting on these materials (at specified temperatures and pressures) by the interaction of spongy iron and water in the presence of (specified metal chloride salts and/or potash minerals.)"
----------
We will be following up with dispatches reporting the United States Patent actually issued to Richard Bayer, as noted above by Pfirrman; and, a few others, similar, issued to inventors in the Reich prior to WWII.
Pfirrman, himself, actually developed one or two other US-patented Coal conversion technologies which we intend to report.
However, the specification herein of metal chlorides as efficient promoters of Coal hydrogenation and liquefaction, predates, by decades, similar technology we've documented as having been developed by Consolidation Coal Company, and later patented by Consol's new parent, Continental Oil Company, Conoco; wherein Zinc Chloride, or Zinc Halide, is identified as key to efficient Coal liquefaction in some of their CoalTL processes.
In any case, we find Pfirrman's technology especially interesting since it specifies, as we have also documented from other sources, the use of finely divided Iron, in combination with the metal chlorides, as a co-reactant which makes available the Hydrogen needed for hydrogenating Coal, by splitting it away from plain old Water.
The technology affirmed by this United States Patent is thus consistent with other descriptions of efficient Coal-to-Liquid conversion processes we've reported. What is also consistent is the utter lack of truly public information that is available about them in the Coal Country of the United States of America.
We can't direct our elected representatives to make informed decisions regarding our national energy policies unless we, ourselves, are informed.
Far past time we were.
