We earlier documented the development, by the USDOE, and/or it's precedent agencies, of Coal gasification technology, wherein Coal could be reacted with Steam, which provides the needed Hydrogen to convert Carbon into hydrocarbons, in our one post, for instance, among others, of July 26: "USDOE Hydrogasifies Coal, Recycles Carbon".
The US Patent, Number 3988123, we detailed in that report was issued in October of 1976; and, we see herein, via the enclosed document, that our US Government had been at work on such Coal hydrogenation technology for even longer.
And, we are compelled to assert, they have been at such work for much, much longer.
We did at one time document for you the multiple Government-sponsored Coal liquefaction facilities that sprang up around the nation in the years and decades following WWII, in such varied locales as Missouri, Alabama and Washington state.
Our supposition was, upon discovering those reports, that such effort was a direct attempt to transfer Axis synthetic fuel technology - which was, again as we've documented, a high-priority strategic concern for the Allied Command - in a way similar to the Government assimilation of Axis rocketry and atomic energy technologies that spurred extraordinary advances for us in those fields.
History buffs will know that we beat Germany to the Bomb only through frantic, combined strategic efforts.
In any case, we didn't beat them to Coal liquefaction.
But, just as we "assimilated" Germany's rocket and atomic scientists, such as Werner Von Braun, into our own efforts in those fields, our contention now is that we did the same with their Coal liquefaction technicians.
We earlier reported on at least one Coal liquefaction technology developed by a scientist residing, quite strangely as it relates to Coal, in the US Virgin Islands; but, which patented technology, even more strangely, was assigned to the United States of America as embodied by the Secretary of the Interior.
Herein, we submit documentation of yet another Coal liquefaction technology with a similar pedigree.
The lead named inventor herein is one "Michael Graboski", supposedly resident in Pennsylvania.
Who he is, or was, we have no idea.
However, his co-inventor is the above-noted US sub-tropics scientist, Ernest E. Donath.
Should you search and examine available records, as we have, you will discover that Donath invented, for the United States Government, a surprising, even shocking, number of Coal liquefaction, and other Coal-related, technologies.
If you dig even further, and, in point of fact, we ask you, we urge you, to do so, as our limited capacities will not allow us to accomplish all the needed excavation, we are confident that you will discover Ernest, or "Ernst", aka - seriously - "Fritz", E. Donath to have been a key scientist, a central figure, in Germany's extensive WWII Coal hydrogenation program, which led to multiple Coal-to-Liquid fuel factories in Germany, and, to at least three, again as we've documented, in Japanese-occupied Asia.
We have accumulated an extensive list of Donath's Coal technologies, but have, until now, aside from the earlier one or two, been reluctant to post them since we were uncertain of Donath's credentials or affiliations.
We now are confident that E.E. Donath was a captured German Coal liquefaction scientist comfortably supported, in a cushy Virgin Islands exile, by, and working for, the United States Government.
Unlike the achievements of Von Braun, et. al., however, no one was too interested in publicizing what exactly it was he was working on, in his remote, palm-tree refuge. We wonder why.
Summary comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,904,386 - Combined ... Process for the Gasification of Carbonaceous Materials
Date: September, 1975
Inventors: Michael Graboski, PA, and Ernest Donath, St. Croix, USVI
Assignee: The United States of America
Abstract: A process for the gasification of coal and other carbonaceous materials to produce a methane rich fuel gas includes the combination of the shift and methanation reactions in a single reactor system. A hot raw synthesis gas comprising methane, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and oxides of carbon passes from a coal gasification system into a combined shift and methanation reactor system where the shift reaction between steam and the product gas adjusts the hydrogen/carbon monoxide ratio. Simultaneously with the occurrence of the shift reaction in the combined reactor system, carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted to methane and water. Steam formed by the methanation reaction promotes the shift reaction to, in turn, produce the hydrogen necessary to carry out the methanation reaction. After purification to remove the acid gases, the methane rich product gas is reacted in a cleanup methanator in the presence of a nickel catalyst to reduce the carbon monoxide content and increase the methane content to the pipeline standards required for synthetic natural gas."
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We close our excerpts here since a few points concerning Coal conversion technology we wanted to document further have been made.
First of all, as herein, in further confirmation of the fact: Steam can be utilized to hydrogenate the Carbon content of Coal, as in a "reaction between steam and the product gas adjusts the hydrogen/carbon monoxide ratio", so that more versatile, and more desired, hydrocarbons can be synthesized.
Second, it is Methane, specifically, that can, as herein, be synthesized via reactions between Coal and Steam; and, as we have elsewhere documented, Methane is of extraordinary utility.
Methane can be converted directly, through catalysis, into liquid hydrocarbon fuels, including Gasoline-range products. It can be added to other processes of indirect Coal conversion to enhance the production of hydrocarbons from those processes; and, perhaps of critical importance, it can, as reported by Penn State University, and others, be reacted, "tri-reformed", with Carbon Dioxide and thereby synthesize very valuable liquid hydrocarbons, such as Methanol.
In any case, do some digging of your own. You will even find the good Doctor Donath listed in compilations of German scientists catalogued by the US Government, and it's Allies, after WWII.
His technological specialty, quite seriously, and quite plainly, was identified as "Coal Hydrogenation".
