Fuel synthesis - US Patent 6375832 Description
We have previously cited for you the work of the Swiss firm, ABB Research, and their scientist, Baldur Eliasson, and his co-worker, Chang-Jun Liu, in the field of Carbon Dioxide recycling.
Herein, through US Patent 6375832, for "Fuel Synthesis", our own, United States Government validates the fact that Carbon Dioxide, as arises in a small way, relative to natural sources, such as volcanism and seasonal vegetative rot, from our varied and valuable uses of Coal, can be converted, recycled, into the liquid fuels we seem so desperately short of.
And, note: Just as China has applied for an International Patent, as we've documented, for a technology to convert Coal into liquid fuels that sounds, to us, like a pirated version of WVU's "West Virginia Process" for Direct Coal Liquefaction, this Swiss patent sounds, again to us, like a close copy of the "Tri-reforming Process" as developed and explained by Penn State University, again as we have documented.
Are we US coal-producing states, and coal people, bound and determined to let the international community continue to rip us off, just as OPEC has been doing for the past three or so decades?
Some heavily-edited excerpts, comment appended:
"US Patent 6375832 - Fuel Syntheis
Issued: April 23, 2002; Estimated Patent Expiration Date: March 21, 2020
One of the major problems facing mankind is the global warming of the atmosphere due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide or ozone. One possible approach to mitigate the emissions of these greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would be to recycle them in a chemical process to form useful products. Among all the man-made greenhouse gases, methane and carbon dioxide contribute to most of the greenhouse effect.
A few processes for the synthesis of liquid fuel starting from gaseous compositions are known, such as the "Mobil process" and the "Fischer-Tropsch process" ... .
For both heterogeneous catalyzed processes the production of "synthesis gas", a mixture of CO and H2 also named "syngas", represents the first step along the path to methanol and gasoline respectively.
A great effort has also given to chemical fixation of carbon dioxide.
The industrial production of syngas mostly derives from the energy-intensive steam reforming of methane... .
Syngas can also be produced from the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide ... .
Non-equilibrium plasma chemical processes occurring in the volume part of electrical non-equilibrium discharges have attracted a great deal of interest.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide for a method of transforming a normally gaseous composition into a normally liquid fuel, which method can be carried out economically, preferably at low pressures.
Accordingly, the invention provides for a method of transforming a normally gaseous composition containing at least one hydrogen source, at least one oxygen source and at least one carbon source into a normally liquid fuel, wherein the gaseous composition consists at least in part of carbon dioxide as the carbon source and the oxygen source, and of methane as the hydrogen source and as a second carbon source, which method comprises the steps of feeding the gaseous composition into a reactor that includes a first electrode means, a second electrode means and at least one layer of a normally solid dielectric material positioned between said first and said second electrode means, submitting the composition within the reactor to a dielectric barrier discharge in the presence of a normally solid catalyst, wherein said normally solid catalyst is a member selected from the group of zeolites, aluminophosphates, silicoaluminophosphates, metalloaluminophosphates and metal oxides containing OH groups, and controlling the dielectric barrier discharge to convert the gaseous composition into the normally liquid fuel. Typically, the normally solid catalyst is selected from the group commonly designated as shape-selective catalysts.
In a second general embodiment the invention provides for a normally liquid fuel obtainable by a dielectric barrier discharge, the normally liquid fuel comprising at least 60 mol % of hydrocarbons having a normal boiling range of between about 50 C. and about 210 C., and less than 10 mol % of oxygenated hydrocarbons.
In a third general embodiment the invention provides for an apparatus for transforming a normally gaseous composition containing at least one hydrogen source, at least one oxygen source and at least one carbon source into a normally liquid fuel as set forth in claim 9."
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Get the picture? Our US Government has acknowledged that technology exists which "can be carried out economically" to convert Carbon Dioxide and Methane - which can itself be synthesized from Carbon Dioxide, via Sabatier processing, or from Coal, via steam gasification - into "methanol and gasoline".
That, of course, in addition to the several US patents held by corporate proxies of our US Department of Defense for the conversion of CO2 into liquid fuels, all as documented on the WV Coal Association's web site, in their Research & Development Blog.
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