We remind you of our earlier reports concerning the USDOE-funded Allentown, PA, Coal liquefaction facility, a pilot plant operated by a small consortium of companies, with Pennsylvania's Air Products and Chemicals Company playing an apparently predominant role.
Most recently, in: USDOE Funds Pennsylvania Coal Liquefaction | Research & Development | News; we reported details of: "United States Patent: 4376032 - Coal Liquefaction Desulfurization Process; 1983; Assignee: International Coal Refining Company (ICR), Allentown".
Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch, we see that the USDOE continued to fund ICR's Coal liquefaction efforts, and the company was, two years later, awarded another US Patent for related technology.
Comment, in a brief attempt to summarize and clarify the jargon, follows highly-abbreviated excerpts from the initial link in this dispatch to:
"United States Patent 4,491,511 - Two-Stage Coal Liquefaction Process
Date: January, 1985
Inventors: Ronald Skinner, PA, et. al.
Assignee: International Coal Refining Company, Allentown
Government Interests: The Government of the United States of America has rights to this invention pursuant to Contract No. DE-AC05-780RO3054 awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Abstract: An improved SRC-I two-stage coal liquefaction process which improves the product slate is provided. Substantially all of the net yield of 650 - 850F heavy distillate from the LC-Finer is combined with the SRC process solvent, substantially all of the net 400 - 650F middle distillate from the SRC section is combined with the hydrocracker solvent in the LC-Finer, and the initial boiling point of the SRC process solvent is increased sufficiently high to produce a net yield of 650.- 850F heavy distillate of zero for the two-stage liquefaction process.
Claims: (A) two-stage coal liquefaction process ... .
Field and Background: This invention relates to the solvent refining of coal. More particularly, this invention relates to an improvement in the SRC-I two-stage liquefaction process which results in an improved product slate.
In the solvent refining of coal, a coal/solvent slurry is treated in a reactor at elevated pressure and temperature in the presence of hydrogen. This process is referred to in the art as SRC-I, solvent refined coal having the acronym SRC.
In a refinement of the SRC-I process, the SRC-I front end process has been combined with an ebullated-bed hydrocracking process, called LC-Fining. The resultant process, which shifts production towards distillates, is referred to as the SCR-I two-stage liquefaction process.
The present invention provides an improved product slate in the SRC-I two-stage liquefaction process and is characterized in that substantially all of the net yield of 650 - 850F heavy distillate from the LC-Finer is combined with the solvent used to prepare the coal/solvent slurry feed for the liquefaction reaction; substantially all of the net 400 - 650F middle distillate from the SRC section is combined with the hydrocracker solvent in the LC-Finer section; and the initial boiling point of the solvent used in the SRC section is increased such that there is no net yield of 650 - 850F heavy distillate in the process. The net liquid products obtained according to the improved two-stage liquefaction process of the invention are substantially limited to naphtha and the 400 - 650F middle distillate from the LC-Finer."
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All of which, we know, is essentially meaningless to all but the initiated.
Our take on it, in essence, is that the Coal conversion practiced by ICR in Allentown resulted, as do many other direct and indirect Coal liquefaction technologies we have already documented for you, in the formation of by-product, highly-carbonaceous, semi-solid residues; in addition to the desired, lower-boiling point liquid hydrocarbons.
As with those other Coal conversion processes we have previously reported, methods can be devised for the further processing of those residues, in order to generate additional hydrocarbon products with desired characteristics.
In the specific case herein, it seems as if the "heavy distillate" is combined with more of the solvent used to initiate dissolution of the raw Coal in the first place, and then simply reprocessed in a reaction sequence similar to that used for the Coal.
As you will see in reports yet to follow, there are, without doubt, scientists at Pennsylvania's Air Products and Chemicals Company who could more clearly explain all of that to us, since Air Products went on, concurrently with and subsequent to their Allentown ICR adventure, to develop additional Coal conversion technologies that offered even better results.
But, again:
Fully one quarter of a century ago, our public US tax money was spent on developing technologies that, through the full and best use of our vast Coal resources, could have spared us the decades of economic bondage to Big Oil and OPEC we have subsequently endured.
Why have we US tax payers, especially those of us resident in US Coal Country, not yet even been afforded the privilege of just hearing and learning about that Coal technology we bought and paid for so long ago?