Method of shutting down the gas generator
We're sending along the enclosed United States Patent, awarded to Texaco more than half a century ago, to illustrate again just how well-developed and well-understood was, at one time, the technology for reacting our abundant Coal with Steam in order to manufacture a synthesis gas - - composed of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide in correct, even adjustable, proportions - - well-suited for catalytic condensation, via, for just one example, the Fischer-Tropsch technology, into liquid hydrocarbons.
The technology disclosed by this document doesn't bother to tell us how to build a synthesis gas generator, wherein Coal is reacted with Steam to produce Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. Instead, it reveals an improved method of actually operating a syngas generator, once it's already been built and has been up and running.
That fact has implications, as above, which we again emphasize, in comment following excerpts from the enclosed link to:
"United States Patent 2,818,326 - Method of Shutting Down the Gas Generator
Date: December, 1957
Inventors: DuBois Eastman and William Slater, CA
Assignee: The Texas Company, NY
Abstract: This invention relates to the production of high-temperature gases at elevated pressure ... .
(It) relates to the production of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, or synthesis gas, wherein a carbonaceous fuel is subjected to reaction ... .
Carbonaceous fuels, including ... coal, coke and lignite may be converted to carbon monoxide and hydrogen by reaction with an oxidizing gas ... .
With the heavier carbonaceous fuels, i.e. ... solid fuels, it is generally desirable to react the fuel with a mixture of free oxygen and steam ... .
Partial oxidation of the carbonaceous fuel under (the conditions specified) may effect substantially complete conversion of the fuel to carbon monoxide and hydrogen."
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We close our excerpts here since the full Disclosure is actually concerned with the specific operation, under specific circumstances, of such a "Gas Generator", which are beyond our purpose and scope.
However, we wanted to use this Texaco technology to again emphasize the point - - since there is a genuine multitude of published literature available which concerns the catalytic condensation of "carbon monoxide and hydrogen, or synthesis gas" into a wide variety of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels - - that such immensely-valuable "synthesis gas" can, indeed, be manufactured, via the "complete conversion" of "coal, coke and lignite" through a controlled "reaction" of such "carbonaceous fuel ... with an oxidizing gas"; which "oxidizing gas" consists of "oxygen and steam".
And, as confirmed herein, not only did we actually know how to do all of that more than half a century ago, we knew how to do it so well that we were actually at work figuring out how to do it even better.