Our headline might at first seem a little misleading. It is not ExxonMobil specifically we report on in this dispatch, but one of the many companies that ultimately coalesced into that sprawling conglomerate.
Moreover, the offensive four-letter word "Coal" isn't mentioned; not even once.
However, we recently made report of: "United States Patent 2,543,795 - Liquid and Gaseous Fuels from Coal" which was awarded in 1951 to scientists working for the Standard Oil Development Company.
In their exposition of that technology, as we attempted to explain, the inventors revealed, in confirmation of other evidence we had earlier submitted, that some Coal conversion processes could be designed in such a way that little or no external energy needed to be supplied to the system.
All, or nearly all, of the process power requirements could be supplied by some exothermic chemical reactions that take place in the course of the Coal conversion.
That fact was more plainly explained and confirmed, as we illustrate herein, a decade and a half later, by other scientists working for the then Standard Oil Company of New York, most often referred to by their acronym, "SOCONY".
And, again, as additional cautionary foreword, we must explain that the full exposition of this Big Oil technology, like others we've cited, manages to avoid entirely any use of the offensive four-letter word "Coal".
However, their frequent references to, and their explanation that this process is actually an advancement on, the venerable "Fischer-Tropsch" technology, which is synonymous with Coal conversion, should be a dead giveaway to anyone who has followed our posts thus far.
Summary comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,254,023 - Heat Balancing in Organic Reactions
Date: May, 1966
Inventor: Joseph Miale, NJ, et. al.
Assignee: Socony Mobil Oil Company, NJ
Abstract: This invention relates to a method of carrying out an exothermic chemical reaction and an endothermic reaction in a single reaction zone wherein the heat evolved in the exothermic reaction is utilized to effect the endothermic reaction.
(The) exothermic reaction may comprise a Fischer-Tropsch type of synthesis reaction.
The exothermic synthesis addition reaction of the Fischer-Tropsch type may be ... utilized to obtain unsaturated and/or saturated aliphatics."
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In point of fact, the full Disclosure is very detailed; and, again, though Coal remains unmentioned, it explains how Zeolite catalysts, as in ExxonMobil's "MTG"(r), methanol-to-gasoline, technology, wherein the Methanol is posited to be made from Coal, can be made to serve as Hydrogen donors in Carbon hydrogenation reactions; and, it also indicates far more clearly how the MTG(r) process, as we have from other sources previously documented, is a derivative advancement of the original Fischer-Tropsch process for Coal liquefaction and hydrogenation.
In addition to avoiding four-letter obscenities, the inventors also manage to avoid offensive phrases like "syngas" or "synthesis gas", preferring to use instead the technically more precise, but emotionally less evocative, terminology of a "fluid charge" consisting of "carbon monoxide and hydrogen".
We presume you to, by now, know from our posts that all you really need, in essence, to do is mix a little red-hot Coal with a little Steam, and - presto! - you get such mixtures of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen.
Further, the inventors rather fully describe, as we have, again from other sources, documented, how weak acids can serve as proton, or Hydrogen, donors in Carbon hydrogenation processes; and, how zeolite minerals can be made to serve as such weak acids.
In sum, this ExxonMobil seed company developed an efficient process for converting synthesis gas, as can be derived from Coal, into a mixture of liquid fuel alcohols, wherein all of the energy needed for the total process can be derived from certain steps within the process.
All of the alcohols produced by this Coal conversion process can, as we have, and as we will in at least one revealing post to follow in coming days, be converted by established and commercialized technologies into Gasoline.
