Method for removing water contained in solid using liquid material - Patent # 7537700 - PatentGenius
Mike,
The excerpt, with comment following:
"Title:
Method for removing water contained in solid using liquid material
Document Type and Number:
United States Patent 7537700
Abstract:
A method and a system for removing water from high water content solid such as high water content coal, which enables dewatering with small energy consumption. A liquefied material which is a gas at 25° C. under 1 atm. (hereinafter referred to as material D) is contacted with a solid containing water to allow the liquefied material D to dissolve the water contained in the solid, and to produce a liquefied material D having a high water content and simultaneously remove the water from the solid, and by vaporizing the material D in the liquefied material having a high water content, to thereby separate the water from the resulting gaseous material D, recovering the separated gaseous material D, and liquefying the recovered gaseous material by pressurizing, cooling or a combination thereof, to reuse the resulting liquefied material for removing water from a solid containing water.
Inventors:
Kanda, Hideki (Kanagawa, JP)
Shirai, Hiromi (Kanagawa, JP)"
Mike, further research reveals that the "Solid" which contains the water is, in fact, coal, and nothing else. And, the mysterious "material D" noted in the Abstract, by these Japanese inventors, is, in fact, dimethyl ether (DME). Both facts can be documented through other sources detailing Patent 7537700.
One point of this is: DME is a very versatile liquid fuel, aside from being - in this US patent awarded to Japanese researchers - a water solvent. It can be substituted directly for automotive diesel, and it can, with relatively simple processing, be converted into methanol, or, perhaps more significantly, gasoline.
And, you can extract, or synthesize, DME with commercial alacrity from coal. In fact, much of the production from China's ambitious coal-to-liquid industrial plans is slated to be in the form of DME.
Further, Malaysia is developing, as we've documented, with Japanese assistance, a coal-to-liquid conversion industry which will convert high-ash and high-moisture lignite coal into liquid fuels - likely DME.
The main point is this: The technology for converting coal, even low-grade, high-moisture lignite, and perhaps some coal mine wastes, into liquid fuel is becoming more refined, sophisticated and economical. In this patent is described technology wherein the potential product of coal-to-liquid fuel conversion is itself efficiently used, while on it's way to final processing steps, to clean and prepare new, incoming raw material for the initial conversion process, to make it more efficient to effect the actual conversion. Other, more detailed, descriptions of this patent from other sources describe how both the extraction of water from brown coal with DME, and then the dehydration of the DME, are efficient, low-energy input processes.
The technology for converting coal into liquid fuels (CTL) is, through developments like this, becoming quite sophisticated, and much more economical. It is, Mike, almost in secret being reduced to commercial practice - efficient and quite sophisticated commercial practice that could well make CTL more than competitive with petroleum.