We've thoroughly documented China's aggressive pursuit of Coal-to-liquid conversion industry, including their cooperation with West Virginia University; and, their filing of international patent applications for a direct Coal-to-liquid conversion process that seems, to us, based on our limited knowledge, very similar to what we understand of WVU's "West Virginia Process" for direct coal liquefaction, which uses the Hydrogen donor solvent, Tetralin.
We have documented as well that Chinese scientists are at work with Swiss colleagues developing technologies for the recycling, into liquid fuels and organic chemicals, of Carbon Dioxide.
Herein, via two links, one above and another following, and two excerpts, we document Iran's development of Carbon Dioxide recycling technologies, also, apparently, with China's help, as revealed in the second report, below:
"Carbon dioxide reforming of methane at near room temperature in low energy pulsed plasma
A.M. Ghorbanzadeh, R. Lotfalipour and S. Rezaei Department of Physics, University of Tehran, North Karegar Avenue, P.O. Box 143951/547, Tehran 1439955961, Iran
October 2008
The reforming of methane by carbon dioxide was studied in a pulsed plasma reactor. The products mainly consisted of syngas and C2 hydrocarbons. Compared to the previous similar works, the electrical pulse energy injected into the reactor was much lower, 5–8 mJ, while the frequency was increased up to 5 kHz. At these low energy densities, the chemical energy efficiency was appreciably improved. The latter was higher than 30% throughout the experiments while reached the maximum of about 55% at the reactants ratio CO2/CH4 = 3. Although, the reactor temperature was typically 70 C, the hydrogen production efficiency of at least 50% was achieved. The better performance at lower energy densities is attributed to the fast saturation of the molecular dissociation rate by the excitation level or equivalently by the pulse energy.
ScienceDirect - Scripta Materialia : A highly stable catalyst in methane reforming with carbon dioxide
A highly stable catalyst in methane reforming with carbon dioxide
M. Rezaei, S.M. Alavi, S. Sahebdelfar and Zi-Feng Yan
Catalyst and Advanced Materials Research Laboratory, Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran
Chemical Engineering Department, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
Petrochemical Research & Technology Company (NPC-RT), Tehran, Iran
State Key Laboratory for Heavy Oil Processing, Key Laboratory of Catalysis, CNPC, China University of Petroleum Dongying 257061, China
March 2009
The nickel catalyst (5% Ni–3% CeO2) supported on mesoporous nanocrystalline zirconia with high surface area and pure tetragonal crystallite phase showed high catalytic stability under severe reaction conditions for more than 1500 h on stream. This catalyst showed a stable catalytic structure even after this long period of reaction time. The obtained results revealed that ceria increased the nickel dispersion and had a positive effect in preventing coke formation and increasing catalyst stability."
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First, "Methane Reforming With Carbon Dioxide" sounds very much like the "Tri-reforming" technology for Carbon Dioxide conversion explained by Penn State University, as we've documented in articles by Song and Grimes, at Penn State. So, WVU might not be the only US Coal state institution of higher learning being mined for valuable information.
Second, we will remind you, yet again, that Methane itself can be synthesized from Carbon Dioxide, using the almost century-old, Nobel Prize-winning Sabatier technology. Or, it can be produced via the hydro-, or steam-, gasification of coal.
In any case, this situation reminds us of the Texas effort to have us Coal Country folk ship them, at our expense, all the CO2 from our coal-use industries for sequestration - let's call it cold storage - in their drying-up oil fields.
An oil-producing entity is developing technology to turn Carbon Dioxide into liquid fuels, while stockpiling the gas in empty petroleum reservoirs.
All against the day when the oil finally does run out.
When that does happen, we'll still be getting the liquid fuels we need, at a price, from someone. If that's the way we really want to let it all play out.
Do we really want to be paying Iran to ship us all of our Coal-use industries' off-gas back in oil tankers?