United States Patent: 4123347
We have submitted extensive documentation of the Coal conversion expertise developed, over the course of decades, and now owned, by the companies that became ExxonMobil.
Needless to say, not one of their Coal gasification and liquefaction technologies, as far as we have been able to determine, has been reduced to commercial practice in the United States, where such practice would benefit the people of the nation that ExxonMobil calls home.
That is especially troubling to us, as we think it should be troubling to everyone, since we, the taxpaying citizens of the United States, helped pay for the development of at least some of ExxonMobil's Coal liquefaction technology.
An advance excerpt from the enclosed United States Patent confirms that assertion:
"Government Interests: The government of the United States of America has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. E(49-18)-2353 awarded by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration."
We the People, in other words, financed ExxonMobil's creation, for themselves, of the following:
"United States Patent 4,123,347 - Coal Liquefaction Process
Date: October 31, 1978 (We gave 'em this Halloween treat, but we still got tricked.)
Inventor: Peter Maa, Texas
Assignee: Exxon Research and Engineering Company, NJ
Abstract: A process for liquefying a particulate coal feed to produce useful petroleum-like liquid products which comprises contacting; in a series of two or more coal liquefaction zones, or stages, graded with respect to temperature, an admixture of a polar compound; or compounds, a hydrogen donor solvent and particulate coal, the total effluent being passed in each instance from a low temperature zone, or stage to the next succeeding higher temperature zone, or stage, of the series. ... Further steps of the process include: separating the product from the liquefaction zone into fractions inclusive of a liquid solvent fraction; hydrotreating said liquid solvent fraction in a hydrogenation zone; and recycling the hydrogenated liquid solvent mixture to said coal liquefaction zones.
(Note: As in the above, confirming earlier of our reports, the solvent needed to liquefy and hydrogenate the raw Coal is a by-product of the Coal liquefaction process itself.)
Government Interests: The government of the United States of America has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. E(49-18)-2353 awarded by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration.
Claims: A process for liquefying a particulate coal feed to produce useful petroleum-like liquid products ... ."
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There actually isn't much new, relative to some of our previous reports, in the technical details of this ExxonMobil process for converting Coal into "useful petroleum-like liquid products".
They are using, as the full document reveals, primary Coal oils, such as Naphthalene, as the agents of liquefaction and hydrogenation for the raw Coal.
But, this is another "Coal Liquefaction Process" We the People paid for Big Oil to invent, and then allowed him to stuff, on a Halloween night three decades ago, deep into his bag of treats and walk away with.
