US Patent for Conversion

Here is yet another United States Patent, issued more than twenty years ago, verifying that, in the expert opinion of our own United States Patent Office examiners, coal can, in a practical way, be converted to useful gasses, liquids and solids.
 
No links enclosed this time. A quick on-line search using the patent number will easily lead you to the full details.
 
As follows:
"Apparatus for the conversion of coal to gas, liquid and solid products
Abstract
An apparatus is provided for converting coal to gas, liquid and solid products. The coal is subjected to a pyrolysis reaction at a temperature of at least about 260.degree. C. in the presence of a hydrogen-containing gas, and the resultant solid residue subjected to a gasification reaction with oxygen and steam at a temperature of at least about 482.degree. C. thereby generating the necessary hydrogen-containing gas for the pyrolysis reaction and producing a solid product. Heat generated in the exothermic gasification reaction is transferred to the pyrolysis reaction, so the apparatus does not require any external source of heat except for means to control the temperature of the gases passing to the pyrolysis reaction chamber. The gaseous fraction generated in the pyrolysis reaction is cooled to produce liquid and gas products, preferably after having first been subjected to a Fischer-Tropsch reaction.
Patent number: 4704135
Filing date: Dec 9, 1985
Issue date: Nov 3, 1987"
This process, is one of many, some not, seemingly, patented but held instead as proprietary information by major corporations such as Sasol, ExxonMobil and Phillips, as we've documented. Note, however, that, at the end of the Abstract, we return to the "Fischer-Tropsch reaction".
The technologies, there are many, apparently, to convert our vast reserves of coal into much-needed liquid fuels and chemicals exist, as verified by our own US Patent Office. Why aren't we yet employing any of them, in a practical and organized way, to free ourselves from foreign economic bondage, to help ensure our domestic security, and to keep our own citizens fully employed?

Coal and Gas: Sasol

Sasol Internet 
 


 
We submit this information in further support of our earlier contentions that technologies applicable to the conversion of natural gas into liquid fuels, as in Qatar's ambitious and documented undertakings, can be just as surely applied to syngas generated from coal.
 
Sasol must be recognized as the world leaders in coal-to-liquid fuel conversion. And, they have developed variations on their well-established Fischer-Tropsch coal conversion technologies to utilize syngas generated from either coal or natural gas.
 
As illustrated in these excerpts from Sasol's web site:
 
"Sasol has developed two new-generation Fischer-Tropsch technologies with significant benefits. These are the high-temperature Sasol Advanced Synthol (SAS) process and the low-temperature Sasol Slurry Phase Distillate (SPD) process."
"Two sources of gas are utilised. In our SAS reactors, synthesis feed gas from coal
is converted to yield gasoline and light olefins. In the SPD process, natural gas is reformed into synthesis gas and then converted to high-quality diesel."
And, of additional import:
"Our separation technologies have enabled us to become an international marketer of 1-pentene, 1-hexene and 1-octene. These technologies have also generated a phenols and cresols business with excellent potential for growth, as well as production of mining chemicals, alcohols, and ketones."
In other words, again as we've been saying, we can make a lot of valuable products, besides and including liquid fuel, from our vast reserves of coal.

Bolivia & Fischer - Tropsch

ConTechs Associates: Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis with Nitrogen-Rich Syngas 

 
The only excerpt we'll submit from this article is the title:
 
"DIESEL FUEL FROM BOLIVIAN NATURAL GAS BY FISCHER-TROPSCH SYNTHESIS USING NITROGEN-RICH SYNGAS"
 
The article focuses specifically on converting natural gas extracted from smaller, "stranded" deposits using, as we have previously suggested to be possible, "miniaturized" and, perhaps, semi-mobile Fischer-Tropsch processors.
 
Although the article does relate to natural gas, that gas is converted, before F-T processing, into syngas, just as coal would be.
 
We're not excerpting any passages in this dispatch, Mike, but will summarize one important point that can be surmised from the report:
 
It is feasible to develop commercial, smaller-scale, less-expensive Fischer-Tropsch conversion units to produce liquid fuels from isolated, even "stranded", deposits of natural hydrocarbons.
 
As we've suggested, it could be practical, as in the proposed Schuykill, PA, coal mine waste-to-oil project, which we have documented, to "clean up" coal mine waste accumulations, which, as Joe's mid-Seventies WVU research showed, often contain significant remaining organic content. It seems now possible to construct "mobile" coal-to-liquid conversion units to move about West Virginia and eliminate accumulations of mine waste by converting them into much-needed liquid fuels.
 
We submit this concept in further support of our contention that a fully-fledged coal-to-liquid conversion industry would be extraordinarily beneficial, economically and environmentally, to us, to the US.

India - CO2 Recycling

DSpace at IIT Bombay: Fischer-Tropsch synthesis using bio-syngas and CO2
 
 
This article comes from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
 
We submit it in support of our thesis that CO2, arising from what should be our many, varied uses of coal, can be captured and recycled into additional liquid fuels and commercially useful organic chemicals. Carbon Dioxide is not so much a harmful pollutant arising from our use of coal as it is a by-product of high, but as yet unrealized, value.
 
The excerpt:

"While Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) using coal and natural gas in conventional reactors is an almost well-established technology, (not in WV or the US, apparently - JtM) the production of liquid hydrocarbons from syngas obtained from biomass is in its preliminary stages of commercialization in countries like Germany. With concerns about global warming and ways of disposing of CO2 being searched for, CO2 hydrogenation using FTS to liquid hydrocarbons can act as a CO2 sink. A brief review of FTS using CO2-rich syngas is given in this paper, looking at FTS as a technology that can help reduce global warming (as we have been saying - JtM) and as a process integration alternative. The reverse water gas shift (r-WGS) reaction is vital for CO2 hydrogenation. We have studied the effect of this using an FT kinetic model and have proposed a new flow sheet alternative for FTS using CO2-rich syngas. Simulations suggested that this new process gives better conversion of CO2. The product selectivity and yields from an FT plant are vital to make the process viable economically."
 
In other words, Mike, full implementation of coal-to-liquid technology, which would recycle, as is demonstrated to be feasible and practical,  the emissions from coal conversion, including and especially Carbon Dioxide, could "help reduce global warming".

Qatar Gas-to-Liquieds (GTL) Projects


 
We submit this information on Qatar's gas-to-liquids industry as we have discovered, since we first reported on the conversion activity there, that they have not just one gas-to-liquid plant under development, but six, at least. And, those plants are being developed by some very major corporations, including: Sasol-Qatar Petroleum (JV), Sasol-Chevron (JV), ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Marathon.
 
An excerpt:
 
"Qatar Petroleum is actively pursuing a number of world-scale gas-to-liquids conversion projects for the production of synthetic fuels and base oil stocks. The projects are all integrated with offshore development to supply the large amounts of gas needed for these projects. These are active business opportunities that are being pursued, but the status of each of the projects is still at the preliminary stage. A brief summary for each project is given."
 
The report, in fact, is some years old, and we do not yet know the current status of any of the projects. We submit this information to illustrate that fuel conversion is a very real industry. Each of the players mentioned above and in the body of the report have their own proprietary conversion technologies, and we have previously detailed some of them for you relative to converting coal into liquid fuels and chemicals.
 
And, that's the point: Processes which can convert natural gas into liquid fuel will convert, with minor adaptation, "syngas", generated from coal, into liquid fuel.
 
The technology and it's rewards, obviously, are quite real, or the heavyweights noted above wouldn't be climbing so eagerly into such a crowded ring.