The Orient Recycles CO2 to Fuel

Our own, US, Department of Defense archives document that Imperial Japan established factories in the Japanese homeland, the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland that converted coal into liquid fuel for her military during WWII.
 
We've reported further that coal-to-liquid technical and industrial development has, more recently, been underway in all three nations. China, especially, has a well-documented, and extensive, coal-to-liquid industrialization program underway.
 
In this submission, we document that all three of those Asian countries are not only at work developing coal liquefaction industries, but are also further developing the technologies, which we've documented to be feasible and practical, to recycle the Carbon Dioxide co-product of coal use into additional liquid fuels.
 
Several links and excerpts, with minor editing of obtuse formulaic symbols, follow: 
 

Document title

Hydrogenation of carbon dioxide over Cu-Zn-chromate/zeolite composite catalyst : the effects of reaction behavior of alkenes on hydrocarbon synthesis
 
Fujiwara M.; Ando H.; Tanaka M.; Souma Y.
 
Osaka national res. inst., AIST, MITI, Ikeda, Osaka 563, Japon

Abstract

The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide was studied using composite catalysts comprised of Cu-Zn-chromate and HY zeolite. These composite catalysts enabled the reaction combining methanol synthesis and methanol-to-gasoline reaction, and achieved the formation of ethylene and propene as the first example of the composite catalysts. The addition of alkaline metals, especially cesium, to Cu-Zn-chromate enhanced the selectivities of those alkenes. The influences of the reaction pressure and the space velocity on the production of alkenes show that alkanes are obtained by the hydrogenation of the corresponding alkenes. The composite catalysts producing alkenes in high selectivity afforded heavier hydrocarbons preferentially. These results indicate that the hydrogenation of alkenes inhibits the carbon homologation of alkenes to result in the predominant formation of the corresponding lighter alkanes. From these observations, it was found that methanol synthesis catalysts used for the composite catalysts are required to be effective for methanol synthesis at high temperature and to bear the low activity of the hydrogenation of alkenes.

ScienceDirect - Energy Conversion and Management : Catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons over zinc promote.

 
Catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons over zinc promoted iron catalysts

Sang-Sung Nam, Soo-Jae Lee, Ho Kim, Ki-Won Jun, Myuong-Jae Choi and Kyu-Wan Lee

KRICT., P.O. Box 107, Yusong, Taejon 305-600, Korea

Abstract

The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to hydrocarbons over iron catalysts was studied in a fixed bed reactor under pressure of 10 atm and temperature of 573 K. Iron catalysts promoted with V, Cr, Mn and Zn prepared by precipitation method were adopted in the present study. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, carbon dioxide chemisorption and Mössbauer spectroscopy. The hydrocarbons were formed directly from carbon dioxide over iron catalysts. The iron promoted with Cr and Mn improved conversion of carbon dioxide and increased the selectivity of alkenes. Whereas, the Zn promoted iron catalyst showed unusually very high selectivity. With varying Fe:Zn ratio, the smaller ratio of Zn increased the alkene selectivity.

 
Low-temperature synthesis of DME from CO2/H2 over Pd-modified CuO–ZnO–Al2O3–ZrO2/HZSM-5 catalysts 

Kunpeng Sun, Weiwei Lu, Min Wang and Xianlun Xu

State Key Laboratory for Oxo Synthesis and Selective Oxidation, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China 

Abstract

Three series of Pd-modified HZSM-5 catalysts were prepared and characterized by BET, XRD and TPR analysis. The catalytic system was evaluated in the development of direct synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) from carbon dioxide hydrogenation at low temperature). The results indicated that the addition of palladium markedly enhanced the DME synthesis and retarded the CO formation. An explanation of this promoting effect of Pd on the DME synthesis could be attributed to the spillover of hydrogen from Pd to the neighboring phase.

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Note, in the above, the mention of Iron-group metals and zeolite (HZSM-5) catalysts used in the liquefaction of Carbon Dioxide. Those catalysts are at the core of at least two "indirect" coal-to-liquid technologies, the Fischer-Tropsch method employed by Germany in WWII, and the more current Exxon-Mobil "MTG" (r), or methanol-to-gasoline, Process, wherein the methanol is posited to be made from coal. "DME", or dimethyl ether, mentioned above, is a useful liquid, diesel-type, fuel and chemical synthesis raw material in it's own right, and can be converted into diesel and gasoline.

This work in China, Japan and Korea is in addition to other Asian CO2-recycling accomplishments, in Singapore, which we've earlier brought to your attention.

Recycling Carbon Dioxide is feasible. And, it sounds a lot more promising and profitable than strangling our coal-use industries through Cap&Trade legislation, or drafting them into the expensive service of Big Oil through enforced geologic sequestration, doesn't it?