WVU Recycles Carbon Via Coal Conversion Technology

 
We are, in truth, only guessing at the accuracy of our headline concerning WVU, and we regret if it should prove inaccurate.
 
No assignment of rights, to another entity, is published in this United States Patent for the gasification of wastes. However, the named inventor is one "Richard Bailie", of Morgantown, WV. And, there is, or was, according to various web-based sources, a Richard C. Bailie, Professor Emeritus at WVU, who taught Chemical Engineering there for more than 20 years.
 
And, concerning Coal, it is, oddly, in this, an invention for Carbon conversion technology emerging from West Virginia, mentioned only once, as in this preliminary excerpt:

"The fluidized bed was first used as a unit operation to gasify solid fuels (brown coal) by Fritz Winkler in Germany in 1926 ... ."

 

However, this is, thus, a technology for recycling Carbon using a Coal conversion technology, as we further elaborate following excerpts from:

"United States Patent 3,853,498 - Production of High Energy Fuel Gas from Municipal Wastes

Date: December, 1974

Inventor: Richard C. Bailie, Morgantown, WV

Abstract: Municipal waste is converted into high energy fuel gas by pyrolyzing same in a pyrolysis reaction zone, the heat energy required for such endothermic pyrolysis reaction being transferred from an exothermic reaction zone. Both reaction zones comprise a bed of fluidized inert solids, and the heat of pyrolysis is transferred by circulating therebetween the fluidized inert solids.

Claims: A method for the gasification of municipal waste to produce high energy fuel gas ... . ... (wherein) heat of exothermic combustion reaction (is) transferred to ...endothermic pyrolysis reaction zone to provide the said heat energy requirements thereof ... . (And) whereby the pyrolysis gas product comprises the high energy fuel gas... . (And) wherein the said pyrolysis gas product is treated through a water gas shift reactor, a carbon dioxide scrubber, a cleanup washer and a methanator... . (And) wherein the municipal waste feed pyrolyzed is selected from the group consisting of municipal solid wastes, wood wastes, agricultural wastes, waste liquid organics and sewage sludge."

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Again, it is a Coal conversion technology which Bailie proposes to use, in the processing of all the above Carbon-recycling wastes, to produce a "high energy fuel gas".

We submit that the same Winkler-type process could and should be applied to our Coal; and, that only Coal can offer the economies of scale needed to help a Carbon-recycling scenario such as this get started in an economically feasible way.

We have previously documented the concept, as proposed by others, that Coal and Carbon-recycling wastes can be combined as co-feeds in an appropriately-designed Coal conversion process, where the end products are liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons.

The gaseous products of Bailie's technology, we submit, could, via Fischer-Tropsch catalysis, be condensed into liquid hydrocarbons; just as can be the synthesis gas derived from Coal in, for instance, the Winkler process cited by Bailie. And, not only would combining the wastes, as herein, with Coal, provide for some recycling of Carbon, the wastes would likely contribute some of the Hydrogen needed by the carbonaceous Coal, for the more complete conversion of it into hydrocarbons.

In any case, the tools for resolving our liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuel shortages, and for improving our environment, through the full utilization of Coal to enable the recycling of wastes, exist. And, they exist, as herein, in local hands.

Why we aren't using those tools we have in hand is a question that someone should take it upon themselves to find an answer to.