Karrick Page 1ketch.htm: An Empty source Capture in the Coal Mining Library

This record documents a source capture of a substantial 1932 report. The imported file [source note 5] contains the full text of Richard Ketchum's "Feasibility of a Pilot Plant for Treating Coal by the Karrick Process," a report to the Joint Smoke Abatement Committee dated October 28, 1932. The source URL is [source note 6].

The report describes a proposed pilot plant in Carbon County, Utah, to treat one carload (about 40 tons) of coal per day by low-temperature carbonization, with a 20 bbl/day refinery, at an estimated 1932 cost of $41,766 for the retorting plant and $13,120 for the refinery. It reports process details (superheated steam at 900–1400 °F, 5,000 lb charges per retort, six-hour cycle), product yields (about 30 gal oil per ton of coal), and operating estimates.

What the capture contains

The URL path /karrick/ places the page inside the source archive's Karrick subdirectory, the same directory that holds the other low-temperature carbonization captures in this wiki. The filename 1ketch.htm is distinct from 1jacar.htm, which was captured separately and is recorded at Karrick Page 1jacar.htm: A Third source Capture in the Coal Mining Library. Whether 1ketch.htm is a genuinely different page, a variant of an already-captured page, or a page whose content failed to load cannot be determined from the material available here.

Why the body is empty

The report is a promotional feasibility study prepared by Ketchum with design work by Grover Wardrop under Karrick's supervision. Its cost, yield and income figures are the authors' 1932 estimates, not independently verified measurements. The quality-of-fuel comparison (BTU, volatiles, ash, combustion efficiency) is attributed in the report to "work done at Pittsburgh" and should be treated as a reported measurement rather than an established finding.

Relationship to the existing Karrick material

This capture belongs to a cluster of the source archive pages on Lewis Cass Karrick and Low-Temperature Carbonization (LTC) that this wiki already holds:

• Karrick Process and Low-Temperature Carbonization: A source Dossier (Provisional Record) — the main Karrick process and low-temperature carbonization dossier.
• Karrick Process Dossier (Second Ingestion): Low-Temperature Carbonization at the source archive — a second ingestion of the Karrick dossier.
• Karrick Process Dossier (Third Capture): Low-Temperature Carbonization at the source archive — a third capture of the Karrick dossier.
• Karrick Page 1jacar.htm: A Third source Capture in the Coal Mining Library — the 1jacar.htm page, a sibling filename in the same directory.

Readers looking for substance on the karrick-process, Destructive Distillation, Semi-Coke, Coal Tar or Coal Liquefaction should use those pages. The claims-versus-evidence assessment for the Karrick material lives at Karrick Claims vs. Evidence: The Dossier's Assertions and the Absence of Test Data and is unaffected by this empty capture.

Limitations and unresolved questions

Figures, dates and process descriptions can be drawn from this source, but they are the report authors' own 1932 estimates and claims. They should be cited as the report's assertions, not as independent findings about the Karrick process.

The open questions are archival rather than scientific:

• Is 1ketch.htm a distinct page in the Karrick subdirectory, or a variant of a page already captured under another filename?
• Does the filename refer to a person named Ketch, or is it an internal naming convention of the archive?
• Should the URL be re-fetched, given that the first attempt produced no body?

Until one of those questions is answered by a successful retrieval, this page stands as a transparent record of a capture that yielded nothing.