Word: otisca
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...mechanics and science behind Otisca are clear and simple. Its advantages in terms of transportation and use in various engines, including diesels and turbines, put it in direct competition with oil and gas. Coal's chief disadvantages are that it is bulky and dirty. Sulfur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) have been indicted as principal villains in the formation of acid rain. More than half the nation's electricity is produced by power plants that burn coal. By running finely ground coal through a chemical bath (currently pentane, a hydrocarbon similar to butane), the Otisca process separates...
...1970s were promising years. Soaring oil prices prompted industry to search seriously for alternative energy sources. Otisca's first pilot project was done with Island Creek Coal Co. -- a 15-ton-per-hr. operation in Bayard, W. Va., at the headwaters of the Potomac. Smith and Keller also did some early business with General Public Utilities in western Pennsylvania, until the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster thoroughly distracted GPU's management...
They didn't make any money to speak of. But on the side, Smith invented a process for extracting oil from tar sand and sold it to Amoco for $1 million. American Electric Power, one of the more enlightened utilities, signed on to build a 125-ton-per-hr. Otisca coal-cleaning plant in Beverly, Ohio. AEP, which serves seven Midwestern states, and by itself produces 3% of the nation's electricity, budgeted $6 million for the project. "We went from a bare field to a fully operational plant within 20 months," recalls Smith proudly. The product of the venture...
...then there was the Freon. About the time the Beverly plant was begun in 1979, scientists were speculating that chlorofluorocarbons were a significant depletor of the earth's ozone layer. In earlier, smaller facilities, Otisca had been able to recover all but 0.1% of the Freon, motivated to do so by the sheer economics of recycling the expensive chemical. But in the big plant in Beverly, it was losing as much as 5%. Smith discovered that he had installed the wrong kind of compressor to recover the Freon, then argued with AEP over how to fix it. "I tried...
There were new clients coming onboard as well. Florida Power & Light funded the pilot plant on Butternut Street. GE placed an order for more than $60,000 worth of Otisca Fuel to run a 4,000-h.p. coal-powered diesel locomotive. Westinghouse was interested in coal-powered turbine engines. So was GM, which developed an experimental coal-powered Cadillac, dubbed the Coal-dorado, that ran on Otisca Fuel. Five big companies -- GE, Norfolk Southern Railway, Eastern Fuels, Westmoreland Coal and Zurn Industries -- jointly invested $8 million in Smith and Keller's little outfit. In November 1984 Smith took a flight...