Patent US2694623
In this United States Patent, enclosed as a link and attached, we further confirm that Standard Oil developed technologies that would enable the conversion of our domestic coal resources into more versatile, but increasingly scarce, forms.
Although we have already documented Standard's patenting of technologies to convert Methane to liquid fuels, as in our reports on both US Patent 4704496, a "Process for Converting Light Hydrocarbon to More Readily Transportable Materials"; and, US Patent 4727207, "Process for converting methane and/or natural gas to more readily transportable materials", we herein document that they have developed the technology to synthesize the Methane, that would be employed in those patented processes to synthesize liquid fuels, from both Coal and Carbon Dioxide.
Linked above and attached, you can access:
"US Patent 2,694,623: Process for the Enrichment of Water Gas
Date: November 16, 1954 (Note: As revealed via the link, the application was filed in 1949.)
Inventors: Albert Welty and Sumner Sweetser
Assignee: Standard Oil Development Co.
Abstract:
The present invention relates to improvements in the art of converting coal or coke to a city gas containing formed methane ... . The present invention constitutes ... the hydrogenation of the oxides of carbon to form methane."
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Yes, "oxides" is plural, and means both Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide. Both are hydrogenated with steam, under proper reaction conditions as specified by this invention, to synthesize Methane.
Standard Oil proposes deliberately obtaining the needed "oxides of carbon" from Coal - just as we would find them in the flue gases of a Coal-fired power plant.
And, once we have the Methane, we can react it with even more Carbon Dioxide, in Tri-reforming and other technologies, such as those explained, as we've documented, both by Penn State University, and by Standard Oil itself, in our previously reported "Process for converting methane and/or natural gas to more readily transportable materials, United States Patent 4727207"; to synthesize more, and more complex, hydrocarbons of genuine value.
Or, as in other technologies we've documented, Methane alone can be converted into gasoline-range hydrocarbons.
In this invention, Standard Oil reveals that Carbon Dioxide is a by-product of our Coal use that can be utilized as a raw material for fuel synthesis.
And, they made that revelation more than half a century ago.
So, oil companies could invest the money to build the facilities to recycle Carbon Dioxide and make synthetic fuels, or:
Through mandated sequestration of CO2, they can have our government force our coal-use industries to, all at the coal user's cost, collect coal's CO2 by-product and pipe it to an oil field; where the oil producer pumps it into the ground, thereby forcing out residual petroleum which the oil producer is then allowed to sell and profit from.
The oil companies still get the hydrocarbons, and the money those hydrocarbons earn for them, but they avoid all the expense and bother of actually having to build and operate a Methane synthesis and conversion factory.
Win-win for them. Lose-lose for those of us resident in US Coal Country; those of us US citizens dependent both on the Coal industry and on liquid fuels.
Far past time we consolidated those dependencies, and thereby gained some independence, ain't it?
