United States Patent: 3755137
Last Thursday, we made report of a Coal liquefaction technology co-owned by the US Government, labeled as the "H-Coal Process: Slurry Oil System", which was developed with government funding by the company, "HRI", Hydrocarbon Research, Inc.
As we indicated in that report, HRI, though somewhat anonymous, are well-represented in the Coal liquefaction literature. And, herein we see that they went on, subsequent to their work for our government, to refine and improve their technologies for Coal liquefaction.
Moreover, in this United States Patent, they are seen to have refined and improved a Coal conversion technology, the "ebullated bed reactor", about which we've earlier reported, and which we will address further, that has also been developed, as we have and will document, by some Big Oil majors.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,755,137 - Ebullated Bed Coal-Oil Hydrogenation and Hydrocracking Process
Date: August, 1973
Inventor: Seymour Schuman; NJ
Assignee: Hydrocarbon Research, Incorporated; NY
Abstract: A process for converting solid carbonaceous materials into valuable chemicals by hydrogenating a slurry of the solid material with a pasting oil in a reaction zone containing an ebullated catalytic bed at temperatures in the range from about 750-950F. and a total pressure in the range from about 1,000 to 4,000 psig, separating the reaction effluent into gaseous materials, char, pasting oil, and a heavy synthetic crude, freeing the crude from the phenolic compounds contained therein and further hydrogenating said synthetic crude in a second stage catalytic reaction zone to produce a light synthetic crude and wherein a portion of the products of the process are used to supply some of the hydrogen requirement of the system.
Claims: The process of conversion of coal to liquid petroleum-like hydrocarbons and gas by a liquid phase catalytic hydrogenation wherein the coal is pretreated to render it amenable to hydrogenation ... .
Description: This invention relates to the conversion of solid carbonaceous solids such as bituminous, semi-bituminous and sub-bituminous grades of coal as well as lignites for the production of more valuable products including solid, liquid and gaseous fuels and chemical byproducts. The invention comprises a process system, substantially based on hydrogenation, which yields products similar to those obtained in oil refineries; in this sense, the system may be called a "coal refinery". "
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As usual, we forego reproduction of all the technical details. Certain of our readers are far, far better qualified to understand them and relate them in simpler terms to the rest of us.
However, we will highlight that most of the needed Hydrogen, to hydrogenate the Carbon extracted from Coal, to form "petroleum-like hydrocarbons", is derived from "a portion of the products of the process".