Patent US1730997
We thought that the US Coal-to-Liquid conversion Patents from the 1930's we've posted so far, nearly all of them issued to German, Austrian and Japanese scientists, were pretty nifty items - until we stumbled across the gem, almost like the fabled diamond discovered in a Coal seam, we enclose herein.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 1,730,997 - Converting Solid Carbon into Liquid Hydrocarbons
Date: October, 1929
Inventor: Paul Danckwardt, California
Abstract: The object of this invention is to produce hydrocarbons similar to mineral oils from solid carbon, or carbon containing material such as coal ... and ... produce the largest possible proportion of hydrocarbons of low boiling points."
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We forego any reproduction of the very involved technical details. Sadly, although we likened this patent to a diamond in a Coal seam, it is, in hard fact, more like a fossil. The inventor's complicated process involves the use of high pressures, high temperatures, free hydrogen and, even, electricity, that, all taken together, would no doubt make the process economically unworkable even in today's OPEC-influenced world.
Certainly, it wouldn't stand up to any comparison with SASOL's commercial indirect Coal conversion technology; or, to WVU's West Virginia Process for direct Coal liquefaction.
Still, in 1929, in California, where natural petroleum, at that time, was, literally, bubbling up out of the ground, someone was smart enough to look ahead to the day when oil derricks couldn't just sprout up like dandelions in any vacant field; and, was also smart enough to figure out that Coal, even in California, where they don't mine any Coal, would be our nation's best bet to keep the engines in our cars turning over.
