Coal hydrogenation, early work

In coal hydrogenation. Dr. L.L. Hirst was in charge of early work until he transferred to the Bureau of Mines at Morgantown, W.V., in 1948 to direct the coal gasification work. He was followed by E.L. Clark and in 1953 by Raymond Hiteshue. Polyfunctional molybdenum catalysts supported on HF-treated clays were developed for vapor phase hydrogenation of CH oils. In about... 

Indeed, early work (Storch et al., 1951 Wu and Storch, 1968) on the production of liquids from coal indicated that the lower-rank coals (particularly the brown coals, i.e., lignites) were more reactive and required a lower hydrogen pressure for liquid production than the bituminous coals. More recent work (Sturm et al., 1981) has shown that the liquid from the lower-rank coals were easier to upgrade but that coal rank alone could not account for the complexity of the liquid products, as noted elsewhere content of the liquids produced decreased. 

The early development of liquid oxidation processes using polythionate solutions for the removal of hydrogen sulfide from gases derived from coal is to a latge extent identified with the work of Feld in Germany. F ld started his studies before the outbreak of World War 1, and his principal aim was to devise a process by which hydrogen sulfide and ammonia could... 

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