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Memorial Tributes Volume 23 (2021) / Chapter Skim
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ERIC H. REICHL
Pages 244-249

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From page 245...
... , Italy, where his father rendered drawings of battle positions. When peace returned, the family moved back to Vienna where Eric was educated at public grade school.
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From page 246...
... He left his fiancée, Eva Neuman de Vegvar, in Geneva where she was studying art and set off for New York, immediately finding a job with Babcock and Wilcox as a field engineer. The firm sent him to a construction project in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he worked the midnight shift and spent his days at the MIT library reading engineering magazines.
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From page 247...
... Eric supervised the research team at Consol, advancing to supervisor, manager, director, and, finally, vice president– research. During this period, he was issued 12 patents, in areas spanning coal liquefaction, coal gasification, cleanup of coalcombustion stack gases and recovery of elemental sulfur from these, coal carbonization and coking, cross-country pipeline transportation of coal slurry, and hydraulic transportation of coarse coal slurry in underground mines.
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From page 248...
... Subsequent development supported by the American government, including the Office of Coal Research, produced data considered sufficient for the design of a commercial plant. In addition to his extensive research and leadership, during his long career Eric served on a number of advisory boards and task forces, including the Department of Energy's Research Advisory Board, the National Petroleum Council's Coal Task Group, the National Science Foundation's Energy Advisory Council, the Gas Research Institute's Research Coordination Council, the Management Advisory Council of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory's Energy and Environmental Visiting Committee.
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From page 249...
... Jim Bowden, a former coworker, said that Eric was a mentor, "unfailingly polite and always focused on the objective, not given to chasing rabbits or being diverted from the task at hand." And Fran noted that "Eric remained to the very last one of the most knowledgeable individuals imaginable. His early education and his incredible memory gave him a remarkable ability to contribute valuable information on a host of scientific and nonscientific subjects." My special thanks go to both of them for contributing the bulk of the information about Eric and supplying extensive narratives, many of which I have included here.
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Key Terms

  • consolidation coal
  • coal gasification
  • coal slurry
  • coal company
  • coal liquefaction

  • bituminous coal
  • standard oil
  • synthetic fuels
  • synthetic oil
  • liquid fuels

  • coarse coal
  • coal mining
  • coal science
  • spanning coal
  • coal utilisation

  • coal task
  • private coal
  • british coal
  • coal carbonization
  • largest coal

  • lynn weyand
  • reserves available
  • petrochemical industry
  • firm sent
  • senior personnel

  • peace returned
  • producing oil
  • using bituminous
  • costly processing
  • family moved


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
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