We continue, herein, to document the USDOE-sponsored development of Coal liquefaction technologies at the Allentown, PA, "International Coal Refining", ICR, pilot plant, which was established and operated by a joint venture that included Pennsylvania's Air Products and Chemicals Company; and, which resulted in a cascade of Coal liquefaction technical developments that continued, as we will see in future reports, even after the Coal conversion pilot plant itself ceased operation.
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.
There are, in the extensive literature available concerning the refining and manufacture of liquid hydrocarbon fuels, many, many references, as we're certain you are by now aware, to the use of "synthesis gas", or "syngas", as the raw material from which liquid, and gaseous, hydrocarbons are catalytically condensed.
So generic is the term syngas, that many of the published technologies, especially those appearing in the patent literature, concerning the catalytic condensation of synthesis gas into various hydrocarbon fuels, don't even hint at where such syngas might come from.
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.
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/5348544-fHw8kU/
Before delving into the particulars of the USDOE-funded Coal conversion research represented by the above link and attached file, we wanted to point out some information that appeared recently in a Coal Country newspaper you might be familiar with, as follows:
Ethanol a Massive Waste - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register; wherein it is revealed that:
"In 1944, Hitler's Schutzstaffel commandeered the entire European potato crop and turned it into ethanol to fuel V2 rockets. With their foreign oil sources interdicted by Allied advances, the Germans resorted to replacing imported oil supplies by converting civilian food stocks into ethanol.