COAL GASIFICATION The plate I (exhibit 4) shows the laboratory for the study of coal gasification and desulfurization. In the center is the pyrolysis furnace and gas-handling equipment. On the left is a gas liquid chromatograph double column, modified from a commercial device. The rest of the equipment was designed and constructed by our staff with a few commercial components. On the right is the plasma spectograph, an invention which this staff made last spring. Behind the plasma spectrograph is a special mass spectrometer. For example, gases can be taken from the pyrolysis furnace through the gas chromatograph on the left which separates them into different chemical compounds or groups. They pass then across to the plasma spectograph on the right and by this device, which is shown in plate II (exhibit 5) more clearly, with the plasma operating in the ring in the center we can tell just what molecules are present and what the ratios of atoms in the molecules are. Now in the plate III (exhibit 6) we see the mass spectrometer more clearly. In a given run on coal we developed one-tenth of a mile of chart record if you take the chart shown and divide it and put it end to end as a single record. BASIC SCIENCE This laboratory shows the application of basic science to a very practical problem. What have we learned in this less than 5-month period? First of all, if one looks into the literature one finds that generally 95-825-68- -6 speaking the literature among this tonnage of papers and documents and reports can be broken into a very few documents that are really of value for practical application of such a scheme. SULFUR REMOVAL KINETICS We need to know the kinetics, the rate of the reactions, because in order to be economic it must go fast enough for a continuous process. If we look at the literature we find that the practical coal-sulfur kinetics papers are prior to 36 years ago and three papers summarize the known knowledge then, two by a man named Powell in 1920 and one by a man named Snow in 1932. Looking at these works we find that first we must check these older results. We took the same kind of coal and put it through a series of tests which led to the submission to the Center a week ago Friday of a first draft paper for publication entitled "Studies on Coal Gasification I. Isothermal Desulfurization Experiments." In this publication we graphed the Snow data in a different way as defined as the sulfur removal factor and then compared with our new data. Exhibit 7 is a graph taken from our paper showing this comparison. We see in the circles the Snow data plotted as sulfur removal factors at different temperatures. We see that slow heating gives on the right of the graph-at a thousand centigrade quite adequate removal but practically too slowly. Our points crosses and squares-check the earlier work. We can accept the entire data of Snow now. It is interesting that our data plotted as the square point was obtained several times in the series of 16 runs and corresponds to a percentage removal of approximately 90 percent of the sulfur by gasification. The question remains how can we make the reactions go fast enough to use in a practical and economic plant. To answer, we have completed a first series of kinetic measurements using a very powerful tool developed recently in Germany by Juntgen and coworkers. In December, having identified the Juntgen papers, we did a translation from the German and submitted it in January to the National Center, we have designed and built the apparatus and applied this technique now to coal. In this technique of nonisothermal kinetics, one heats at a known rate from room temperature up to, say, 1,100° centigrade and measures continuously the rate of emission of each gas. Exhibit 8 is one result which was taken from a paper submitted Friday, several days ago, to the Center, called "Studies on Coal Gasification II: Non-Isothermal Desulfurization Kinetics." This is one plot from those data, from the tenth of a mile chart record, showing in the black circles the experimental measurements with the mass spectrometer of hydrogen sulfide emission as coal is heated from 100° centigrade up to 1,100. There are many more experimental points in between but they all fall on the smooth continuous curve. At the same time all gases were trapped in a series of batch traps and these were subsequently analyzed by different techniques. The rectangular lines represent the measure Sulfur removal factors in coal gasification: O, O R. D. ments of the trapped samples showing the confirmation of the mass spectrometer measurements. What does such a curve mean? Classically it means very little. If you approach this from an engineering point of view or a classical point of view of merely attempting to obtain a know-how technique it is not too meaningful. If you go through the appropriate mathematical analysis you can unravel these data as shown in exhibit 9. Senator SPONG. Before you go on may I interrupt Dr. JOHNSTON. Surely. |