Lewis Cass Karrick (1890–1962) was an American

petroleum refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petr ...

engineer,

oil shale Oil shale is an organic-rich Granularity, fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of Organic compound, organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. In addition to kerogen, general compos ...

and

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

technologist, and inventor. He

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

ed several coal and oil shale related inventions, and he also refined and perfected a low-temperature

carbonization Carbonization or carbonisation is the conversion of organic matters like plants and dead animal remains into carbon through destructive distillation. Complexity in carbonization Carbonization is a pyrolytic reaction, therefore, is considered a ...

and

pyrolysis Pyrolysis is a process involving the Bond cleavage, separation of covalent bonds in organic matter by thermal decomposition within an Chemically inert, inert environment without oxygen. Etymology The word ''pyrolysis'' is coined from the Gree ...

process for processing coal and other carbonaceous materials, known as the Karrick process. Lewis Carrick worked as a consulting engineer for the United States synthetic fuels studies in Utah and Ohio. In 1920s, he improved the low-temperature carbonization and pyrolysis process for processing coal and other

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

aceous materials, which is known as Karrick process. He was also actively involved in the early development of the NTU oil shale retort. In 1930–1938, he worked as a supervisor of the coal products research at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

. In 1943, Karrick was employed by the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

to work on Alaska and Rockey Mountain Coal Survey. In 1950, he was transferred to the

United States Bureau of Mines The United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) was the primary Federal government of the United States, United States government agency in the 20th century that conducted scientific research and disseminated information on the extraction, processing ...

's Pittsburgh station.

Patents issued to Lewis Karrick

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karrick, Lewis Cass American chemical engineers 1890 births 1962 deaths 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors Oil shale technology inventors 20th-century American chemists