We submit herein yet another web-accessible "textbook" on the conversion of coal - and CO2-recycling biomass - into liquid transportation fuels.
Coal is secondary in this treatment of the subject. Though currently abundant, coal, we must all acknowledge, is ultimately a finite resource. It will, eventually and sadly, run out.
But, it represents, right now, a more concentrated source of carbon compounds from which more valuable organic products can be manufactured as our dwindling supply of petroleum-based chemicals, along with petroleum fuels, grows ever smaller and dwindles, at last, away.
We will want our coal for things more lastingly useful than gasoline.
However, here and now, coal's abundance and the established technologies that exist to convert it into liquid fuels, and plastics manufacturing raw materials, would enable us to establish a liquid fuel production industry starting with coal, and then to use increasing amounts of biomass that can be processed into liquid fuels using the same facilities.
Coal could thus be somewhat conserved for more valuable applications, and a foundation of sustainability thereby established.
All of that would be in addition, of course, to the direct recycling of Carbon Dioxide, via Sabatier, Carnol and other technologies, which we have thoroughly documented, into hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals.
That said, following is the table of contents of the enclosed book; yet more evidence that the technologies do exist to enable both our full employment of coal to supply our current liquid fuel needs and our use of coal to lead us into a future era of true economic, and environmental, sustainability:
Sadly, they do make reference to what we believe should be the outdated, and summarily discarded, concept of expensive and wasteful "carbon storage".
With Sabatier, Carnol and Bio- technologies, we could, and should, start thinking, and planning, in terms of "carbon recycling" to make the fullest use possible of our coal resources, and of our coal-use byproducts.