Without linking to earlier reports, we remind you that we have previously documented the "International Coal Refining (ICR) Company", which was a USDOE-funded joint venture comprising Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc., and Pennsylvania's Air Products and Chemicals company, that built, and for a brief time operated, a "Solvent Refined Coal", or "SRC", Coal refining facility near Allentown, PA.
Since, in coming days, we will be sending along report of additional Coal conversion technologies developed independently by Air Products, in the years immediately subsequent to the ICR project, but again with USDOE funding, we wanted, herein, to document even more Coal processing technology that originated at the Allentown SRC pilot plant.
And, the information disclosed by this US Patent also stands in confirmation of similar facts we have, as in our reports concerning, for one instance, operation by the FMC company, for the US Government, of the "COED" Coal conversion process at a pilot plant in New Jersey, previously documented:
In that, any carbonaceous, and sometimes nearly-pure Carbon, residues resulting from an initial and primary process of Coal conversion can be further treated for the extraction of even more hydrocarbon values, and the production of even more liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
Further, any solvent required, to actually dissolve the Carbon in the residues, or the solid Carbon product, can be derived from the Coal conversion process itself.
As seen, with comment appended, in our excerpts from the link to:
"United States Patent 4,547,201 - SRC Residual Fuel Oils
Date: October, 1985
Inventors: Krishna Tewari and Edward Foster, PA
Assignee: International Coal Refining Company, Allentown
The Government of the United States of America has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. DE-AC05780RO3054 (as modified) awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Abstract: Coal solids (SRC) and distillate oils are combined to afford single-phase blends of residual oils which have utility as fuel oils substitutes. The components are combined on the basis of their respective polarities, that is, on the basis of their heteroatom content, to assure complete solubilization of SRC. The resulting composition is a fuel oil blend which retains its stability and homogeneity over the long term.
Claims: A homogeneous, single phase blend of fuel oil having long term viscosity stability ... .
A fuel oil ... wherein first-stage deashed ... coal (SRC) is blended with first-stage distillate oil.
A method for preparing a homogeneous, single-phase blend of fuel oil which comprises blending two components, a deashed solvent refined coal ... with ... a coal liquefaction process solvent.
(So the solvent, as in other, similar technologies we have documented for you, can be Coal-derived and made as a co-product of the overall process.)
Description: This invention relates to a composition of matter which has utility as a fuel oil substitute.
More specifically, this invention relates to a blend of solvent refined coal in a mixture of distillate oils. The resulting composition exhibits long term stability as a fuel oil and it may be used with only minor modification in existing infrastructures.
It has been discovered that deashed solvent refined coal ... can be combined with the distillate oils of solvent refined coal to provide compositions which are uniquely stable over long periods, a feature which makes them suitable as simulated (we would say substitute) fuel oils."
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In other words, as we understand it, the purified, mostly-Carbon, Solvent Refined Coal, resulting as a primary product of the SRC process, can be dissolved in "distillate oils" generated during the "solvent refined coal" process and made thereby to produce a "fuel oil substitute" which can be used "in existing infrastructures".
Due to the over-use of what we must characterize as "jargon", and technical shorthand decipherable only to the initiated, we can't explain the technology much further.
But, simply, in sum: Carbon, here in the form of deashed Solvent Refined Coal, can be dissolved in a liquid product which can be derived or manufactured as a function of the total Coal refining process, i.e., "the distillate oils of solvent refined coal", and made to yield such a "fuel oil" that is compatible with the liquid fuel handling "infrastructures" that already exist.
And, our US tax money was spent to establish those facts more than a quarter of a century ago.