Coal hydrogenation process
Although there is no corporate assignee named for this United States Patent, we believe the inventors, as we have from other sources previously documented, to have been associated with the Union Carbide Coal hydrogenation plant, about which we've reported, that once operated in South Charleston, WV.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 2,913,388 - Coal Hydrogenation Process
Date: November, 1959
Inventor: John Howell, et. al.; South Charleston, WV
Abstract: This invention relates to a new and improved process for the hydrogenation of coal. More particularly, the invention relates to a high temperature, moderate pressure coal hydrogenation process employing a relatively low volume of reaction space, whereby chemicals in the form of oils, gases and pitch are recovered from the coal in good yields.
For more than one hundred years coal has been used to produce gas in the United States by destructive distillation and by other gasification processes ... .
Our invention ... provides an improved process for the hydrogenation of coal to chemicals-containing gas, oil and pitch which produces these materials in quantity with efficient utilization of the coal and does so in a manner which is economically competitive with the processes for chemicals ... from petroleum sources."
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If we could produce "gas" and "oil" from Coal, in 1959, "in a manner ... economically competitive" with those "from petroleum sources", what, would you suppose, the competitive situation now, half a century later, with all the subsequent manipulations of OPEC and Big Oil, to be?
