Pennsylvania State University Senior Vice President for Research: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
We have many times documented the achievements of Chunsan Song and Craig Grimes, at Penn State University, in the science of Carbon Dioxide recycling.
We insist their "Tri-reforming" technology, wherein Carbon Dioxide is reacted with Methane, which can itself be manufactured from CO2, via the Sabatier process, or from Coal, via hydro-gasification, all as we have documented, to synthesize higher hydrocarbons, is something that deserves much broader discussion and much more assertive development.
Apparently, to a sadly somewhat limited extent, so does our US Department of Energy, as documented herein.
A brief excerpt from the link:
"Craig A Grimes of Electrical Engineering has received an award from the U.S. Department of Energy which is for a project entitled, "Towards Scale Solar Conversion of CO2 and Water Vapor to Hydrocarbon Fuels." Total funding will be $1,908,732."
You will recall, we trust, that we once quoted Penn State's Craig Grimes as saying that "Burying CO2 is ridiculous", relative to Big Oil's sequestration scam.
Two million bucks seems a pittance to commit towards the development of a technology that could help us take a big step forward in achieving domestic liquid fuel self-sufficiency, especially when millions upon millions have been squandered on wasteful and economically-crippling schemes and scams like Cap&Trade and Sequestration.
How many miles, would you guess, of Carbon Dioxide pipeline, headed for the West Texas oil fields, would two million bucks buy? Not many, would be our instinctive thought. And, if Big Oil has his way, we will all be paying for a lot of CO2 pipeline miles.
We should be devoting much more of our money to constructive, and genuinely productive, efforts like the one Grimes and Penn State are undertaking.
Maybe some publicity would help.
But, it's a start. And, it does serve to help confirm, at least, what we've been saying:
Carbon Dioxide, as arises in a small way, relative to natural sources of emission, such as volcanoes and seasonal vegetative rot, from our productive and varied uses of Coal, is a valuable raw material resource. We shouldn't, through Cap & Trade legislation, be attempting to tax our vital Coal industries out of existence for producing it; nor, should we be enslaving them, through enforced CO2 sequestration in fading oil fields, into the service of Big Oil and his exploitive manipulation of the circumstances.
