CYCLIC PROCESS FOR CONVERTING COAL INTO LIQUID PRODUCTS BY USE OF FIXED CATALYTIC BEDS - Patent 3514394
We continue to hack our way through the dense swamp of Coal liquefaction technologies developed by Esso/Exxon, with this submission, the first of two from the year 1970.
Our excerpts will be brief, since much of the disclosed technology is redundant, relative to other of our reports; it is almost repetitive, in fact, even though our take was that patents should be issued for genuinely "novel" developments.
In any case, some comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,514,394 - Cyclic Process for Converting Coal into Liquid Products
Date: May, 1970
Inventor: Edward Wilson, et. al., Texas
Assignee: Esso Research and Engineering Company
Abstract: In the hydrogen-donor extraction of coal, which results in a hydrogen-depleted donor solvent and a coal extract, the extract is passed over a fixed catalyst bed (and, by arranging for back flow of the hydrogenated coal liquids) the catalyst particles are cleansed both by removal of solids and by solution of deposited tarry materials.
Suitable hydrogen-donor solvents are well-known in the art, such as ... tetralin ..., etc.
Claims: A process for producing hydrocarbon liquids from coal."
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Again, we know that we have submitted similar reports, where technologies were described for arranging back flow over Coal conversion catalysts, to "attrite" them, as at least one previously-cited technology describes, and thus keep the catalyst particle surfaces clean and active.
Moreover, we see herein yet another reference to the hydrogen donor solvent, "Tetralin", as we believe to be specified by WVU, in their "West Virginia Process" for direct Coal liquefaction. And, among other Coal solvents specified herein by Esso, not represented in our excerpts, are, in confirmation of many other of our previous reports, primary Coal oils which, Esso says quite clearly, can be derived via distillation of Coal, and as an integral function of early steps in this Coal conversion process.
As it happens, again reflective, as should by now be obvious, of Esso/Exxon's intensive development of Coal conversion technologies throughout the latter parts of the prior century, they were issued even another US Patent in 1970 for yet another refinement of Coal conversion technology.
Our report of that follows, tomorrow.
