Patent US3275546
We continue, in this submission, in as orderly a fashion as we are able to manage, to chronicle the development, by our local Consolidation Coal Company, throughout multiple decades, of very refined and highly-developed processes for the conversion of Coal into liquid hydrocarbons.
Herein, we see that they devoted some successful effort to overcoming and minimizing the effects of a problem we have previously documented, in processes both for the conversion of Coal and for the Methane reforming of Carbon Dioxide to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons: the deposition of Carbon and Ash on catalyst surfaces with subsequent degradation of catalyst efficiency.
Consol found the solution to that problem in process design rather than in chemistry.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,275,546 - Attriting Solids in a Hydrotreating Process
Date: September, 1966
Inventor: William Retalick, Canonsburg, PA
Assignee: Consolidation Coal Company, Pittsburgh
Abstract: This invention relates to a method of attriting solids. More particularly, this invention relates to a method of attriting liquid-phase fluidizable solids. Still more particularly, this method relates to a method of removing a thin layer of ash from a catalyst from a catalyst, which has been used to catalytically hydrogenate ash-containing hydrocarbonaceous liquids.
In (several specified Everett Gorin US Patents assigned to Consol) processes are described for the production of ... gasoline from coal.
It has been found that when ash-containing coal extract is contacted with catalyst, the coal-extract ash preferentially deposits on the catalyst surface and forms a thin outer layer thereon. ... (Now) it has been found that the thin outer layer ... may be selectively removed from the deactivated catalyst. Furthermore, when the outer layer is removed the resulting abraded or attrited catalyst frequently possesses substantially pristine activity."
----------
We close our excerpts here since the bulk of Retalick's disclosure is devoted to the mechanics of how ash settles out of Coal liquids being hydrogenated into, as per the Everett Gorin patents, Gasoline; coats catalyst surfaces, thus tending to deactivate them; and, how the particles of such Coal conversion catalysts can be made to be more or less self-cleaning.
That is accomplished by arranging things so that the flow of Coal-derived liquids causes the particles of catalyst to, simply, bounce around in the turbulence, knock into one another, and, thereby abrade deposits from their surfaces.
Seems simple, perhaps even niggling. But, it is representative of the many details that must be attended to in a complex chemical process, if one's intent is to make such a process as practically and economically successful as possible.
Consol, by 1966, was already, thus, putting the polish on a successful process for converting Coal, ultimately, as per the Everett Gorin patents, into Gasoline.
Too bad such a highly-polished CoalTL vehicle never made it out of the US Patent Office's showroom; not even for a test drive, apparently.
