http://www.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/40_1_ANAHEIM_04-95_0077.pdf
We have previously documented for you West Virginia University's achievements in the technology of direct Coal liquefaction, including not only their close cooperation with China, in that nation's ambitious plans to develop an extensive Coal liquefaction industry, but their research into ways in which other, unappreciated, resources, such as used auto tires and some scrapped plastics, can be combined with Coal in an appropriately-designed Coal liquefaction process.
We have also documented, from various sources, that some renewable, CO2-recycling, biologically-based resources, primarily waste cellulose in the form of saw dust, can also have the potential to be co-processed with Coal in the manufacture of liquid fuels.
Herein, via the link and attached document, WVU affirms that potential and describes how bio-based materials can be converted into liquid fuels, along with Coal, in a way that extends our resources and inherently recycles Carbon Dioxide.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"Co-processing of Agricultural and Biomass Waste with Coal
Alfred H. Stiller, et. al.; Dept.of Chemical Engineering; West Virginia University
A major thrust of our research program is the use of waste materials as co-liquefaction agents for the first-stage conversion of coal to liquid fuels. By fulfilling one or more of the roles of an expensive solvent in the direct coal liquefaction (DCL) process, the waste material is disposed off ex-landfill, and may improve the overall economics of DCL. Work in our group has concentrated on co-liquefaction with waste rubber tires, some results from which are presented elsewhere in these Preprints. In this paper, we report on preliminary results with agricultural and biomass-type waste as co-liquefaction agents.
The ideal co-liquefaction agent has, at a minimum, three characteristics: it should be available in an unlimited supply; it should be expensive to dispose of, whether in a landfill or by other means; and it should contain components which can function as hydrogen-transfer agents and/or termination agents for free
radicals. The first two of these allow for a significant economic impact on the DCL process, and the last ensures good processing properties. While no single agent fulfills all these requirements, the two categories used in the present work are viable candidates. In the category of biomass-type waste, we have used sawdust. In the category of agricultural waste, we have used horse manure, cow manure, and a more-prosaic (but perhaps more-reproducible) commercially available manure ("Supermanure") .
Standard tubing-bomb reactors were used. They were filled with either coal alone or equal weights of coal and one of the co-liquefaction agents described above. The coal used throughout these runs was a high-volatile-A bituminous coal from the Blind Canyon seam, Utah, coded as DECS-6 by the Pennsylvania state University Coal Bank.
(For whatever unfathomable, but, we're certain, worthy reason, West Virginia University felt compelled to use Coal imported from Utah, via Pennsylvania, in their developments. That fact, for us, serves as just more evidence of how convoluted, obfuscated and obscured the technology of Coal liquefaction has, with seeming deliberation, been made to be. - JtM)
Reactions were carried out both in the absence of any additional solvent and with ... tetralin."