SpringerLink - Journal Article
Pursuant to our recent dispatch documenting that the United States' Gas Research Institute, in Chicago, patented, more than twenty years ago, technology wherein Methane can be synthesized from Carbon Dioxide, as in US Patent Number 4609440: Electrochemical synthesis of methane; we wanted to document from yet another independent source that, once Methane has been generated, via either synthesis from CO2 or gasification from Coal, it can be reacted with even more Carbon Dioxide to synthesize more, and more complex, hydrocarbons.
Moreover, such technology is understood in useful and valuable detail at centers of learning throughout the world.
Herein, from Russia, is more, brief, evidence of that fact. What we find of most interest is the catalyst they employed. We believe it to be - based on the general formula presented - a type of zeolite mineral likely similar to the one specified by ExxonMobil in their "MTG"(r), Methanol-to-Gasoline, process, wherein the Methanol is posited to be made from Coal.
And, theses researchers are focusing on what might seem niggling details of the reaction process. We think that to be an important point.
In any case, the excerpt, with comment appended:
"The Mechanistic Study of Methane Reforming with Carbon Dioxide on Ni/α-Al2O3
V. Yu. Bychkov, O. V. Krylov and V. N. Korchak
Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117977, Russia
Journal: Kinetics and Catalysis; Volume 43, Number 1; January 2002
Abstract: The reactions of oxidized and reduced 6 wt % NiO/-Al2O3 with H2, CH4, CO2, O2, and their mixtures are studied in flow and pulse regimes using a setup equipped with a differential scanning calorimeter DSC-111 and a system for chromatographic analysis. It is shown that treatment with hydrogen at 700C results in the partial reduction of NiO to Ni. Methane practically does not react with oxidized Ni/-Al2O3 but it does react actively with the reduced catalyst to form H2 and surface carbon. The latter is capable of reacting with lattice oxygen of Ni/-Al2O3 (slowly) and with adsorbed oxygen (rapidly). Carbon dioxide also reacts with surface carbon to form CO (rapidly) and with metallic Ni to yield CO and NiO (slowly). Thus, the main route of methane reforming with carbon dioxide on Ni/-Al2O3 is the dissociative adsorption of CH4 to form surface carbon and H2 and the reaction of this carbon with CO2 resulting in the formation of CO by the reverse Boudouard reaction. Side routes are the interaction of the products of methane chemisorption with catalyst oxygen and the dissociative adsorption of CO2 on metallic nickel. A competitive reaction of surface carbon with adsorbed oxygen results in a decrease in the CO2 conversion in methane reforming with carbon dioxide. Therefore, the presence of gaseous oxygen in the reacting mixture decelerates methane reforming (catalyst poisoning by oxygen)."
---------
It is all work centered on making the known technology for combining Methane and Carbon Dioxide on zeolite catalysts, to synthesize higher hydrocarbons, better and more efficient.
How much better, we are forced to ask, does it have to get before it makes more sense than spending a vast fortune to collect Carbon Dioxide at it's points of origination, and then pipe it all to and pump it all down leaky geologic sequestration rat holes?
Our contention is that, if Geologic Sequestration and/or Cap & Trade, with their associated financial costs to society, are mandated, then, if those options are obviated via Carbon Dioxide recycling, the costs of them could and should be deducted from the final, effective, costs to our society of useful products created by such Carbon recycling.
Either way, we will be paying for it. But, do we want to pay to make something we can actually use, and which could lead us into a domestic liquid fuels self-sufficiency; or, do we want to pay to dispose of something in an expensive way that, as we've documented, is of very doubtful long-term effectiveness; and, which just might be a "back door" public subsidy of the petroleum industry and their profits?
