Process of producing gas mixtures for synthetic purposes
Make note of the first named inventor, and assign his name to memory. He figures in a dispatch, with some uncertain implications, to follow in coming days.
We've documented, and will further document, Germany's development of Coal liquefaction technology leading up to WWII, which resulted in multiple Axis synthetic fuel production facilities in the Coal-producing regions of occupied Europe and Asia becoming high-priority strategic targets of Allied bombing.
As should be apparent from the records we've been able so far to provide, our US Government was, in fact, well-aware of Germany's growing Coal-to-Liquid fuel capability.
Via the enclosed US Patent, it should had to have been clear to our Government that Japan, as well, was able to convert, not just Coal, but also waste gases arising from the use of Coal, into liquid fuels.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 2,337,551 - Producing Gas Mixtures for Synthetic Purposes
Date: December, 1943
Fritz Hansgirg and Hoshigaura-Dairen; Kwantung, Manchoukuo - Vested in the Alien Property Custodian
Abstract: This invention relates to a process of producing a gas mixture suitable for synthetic purposes. The present invention consists principally in a method of using a gas mixture as blast gas in metallurgical and other processes ... in order to produce in the furnace a gas mixture consisting mainly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide ... in a ratio suitable for synthetic purposes.
According to the present invention, industrial gases poor in nitrogen which are by-products of chemical processes, are used together with oxygen as blast gases in metallurgical reduction processes, and gas mixtures suitable for synthetic use are recovered from such operations.
As industrial gases, for example, there may be used the methane-rich waste gases from oil synthesis and coal hydrogenation processes, and ... coke oven gas ... .
(In other words, we can even recover and employ, to make hydrocarbons, the by-product gases arising from primary Coal conversion processes that are synthesizing hydrocarbons.)
To produce hydrogen it is not necessary to have water gas as the source. There exist ... large amounts of waste gases like coke oven gas ... and waste gases from the coal hydrogenation and oil synthesis processes (which) contain a considerable amount of hydrogen together with methane ... .
(In metal ore reduction processes where the ore is mixed with coke) hydrogen present cannot be oxidized into steam, as in contact with (hot) carbon the steam must react immediately forming CO and H2. ... under equilibrium conditions in the hearth zone only elementary C, carbon monoxide and hydrogen can coexist.
By the new process it is therefor possible to produce with great economy and without any considerable change ... in the iron blast furnace ... a furnace gas which consists mainly in hydrogen and carbon monoxide ... suitable for synthetic purposes."
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We have previously documented the use of Coke Oven off-gas for liquid hydrocarbon synthesis. And, as it happens, there were later developments in the use of Blast Furnace off-gases, as herein, for the same purpose, as we will later document for you.
But, the question is obvious: Since our US Government, as herein officially, has known for nearly seventy years that we can make, as a by-product of Coal use in the refining of metal, a gas "suitable for synthetic purposes", which "synthetic purposes", we submit, would include the synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon fuels, why have we US citizens, especially those of us resident in US Coal Country, not yet even heard about that technology, much less been given the opportunity to implement it for all our common benefit?
Seriously: Isn't that a question that should not only be asked, but answer to it demanded?
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