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Our own United States Government, well more than half a century ago, confirmed what we have previously documented from other credible sources:
Not only can Coal be efficiently converted into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels, but, any carbonaceous residues, left over by an initial process of Coal conversion, can themselves be further treated to extract even more hydrocarbon values.
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Forty years ago, our own, local, Consolidation Coal Company, in contracted service to, and at the behest of, our own United States Government, told us, quite plainly and directly, how to go about "Making Liquid Fuels From Coal".
One of the inventors named in this United States Patent is Consol scientist Everett Gorin, whom we have already cited multiple times in the course of our reportage.
What we find of most interest in the full patent Disclosure, however, is how clearly the fact that Coal can be directly converted into liquid fuels is not just plainly stated, but illustrated.
In an opening schematic, a pile of Coal is shown with an arrow directing it into a relatively simple maze of clearly-labeled pipes and vessels.
Another arrow points out of the other end of the pipes, to the word "Gasoline".
The inventors, and Consol, did not want the "point" to be missed: Coal can be, directly and efficiently, converted into Gasoline.
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As we have reported, an extensive body of Coal liquefaction technology was developed by Pittsburgh, PA's former Gulf Oil Corporation, prior to their assimilation by California's Chevron.
We have also documented Chevron's coincident interest in Coal liquefaction technology, suggesting that such coincident interest might have been a motivating factor in their acquisition of Gulf.
In any case, we submit herein further evidence of just how advanced the technology for converting Coal into liquid fuels actually is, through another United States Patent issued to Chevron, which, as with other, similar technologies we have reported, doesn't disclose how liquid hydrocarbons are made from Coal, but, instead, reveals how such Coal-derived liquids, once they are produced, can be more efficiently refined to serve as direct replacements for the products we now derive from petroleum.
It's an important bit of technology, we believe, since it confirms earlier of our reports documenting that large amounts of expensive, pure Hydrogen aren't needed in order to hydrogenate the Carbonaceous liquids derived from Coal, in order to make them suitable as direct replacements for petroleum liquids.
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We open this dispatch with a statement excerpted from the US Patent, as linked above, which was issued, fully one quarter of a century ago, to Mobil Oil Corporation:
"It is recognized that the coal products may furnish a substitute for petroleum-based fuels and for petroleum-based feedstocks for the chemical industry."
They don't, however, say by who, or where, such a fact was, back in 1984, recognized.
Apparently it wasn't by anyone in US Coal Country.
In any case, we remind you of our previous, August 29, report, of: United States Patent: 4252736, "Conversion of Synthesis Gas to Hydrocarbon Mixtures", which was awarded in 1981, also to Mobil Oil, and which detailed a process for, as the Abstract states, "the conversion of coal to gaseous and liquid products" which included "methane, LPG, gasoline and distillate".
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We have made several reports documenting the Coal-to-Liquid conversion accomplishments of Pittsburgh's old Gulf Oil Corporation, which was subsequently, in 1984, merged into Chevron.
Earlier, for instance, we made report of Gulf's "United States Patent 3,884,796 - Solvent Refined Coal Process", issued in 1975, the rights to which were actually assigned to the United States of America, since, as the document revealed, the Coal conversion technology had been developed: "under Contract No. 14-01-0001-496 between The Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Co., a subsidiary of Gulf Oil Corporation, and the Office of Coal Research in the Department of the Interior".
Separately, we have also made many reports documenting the seemingly independent development of multiple Coal Liquefaction technologies, prior to their merger, by the former Exxon and Mobil Oil corporations, and have suggested that their congruent interests in converting Coal into liquid hydrocarbons might have been a motivating factor in their merger.
The same might also have been true of Chevron's absorption of Gulf Oil.
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