Patent US0956734
We have many times reported on, and made reference to, the Carbon Dioxide recycling technology invented a hundred years ago by French citizen Paul Sabatier, wherein CO2 is converted into Methane and Oxygen.
That discovery won Sabatier the Nobel Prize in 1912; and, the underlying process is, as we have documented, both currently being used by NASA aboard the International Space Station, to remove CO2 from the habitat, and being planned for use by NASA on the planet Mars, to synthesize rocket fuel.
However, what we find now just as interesting is, that, two years before Europe's Nobel Committee awarded Sabatier their Prize in Chemistry for recycling Carbon Dioxide, into Methane, our United States Government, in 1910, awarded that very same Paul Sabatier a US Patent for, essentially, the steam-gasification of Coal, to produce both Methane and Hydrogen.
Comment follows very brief excerpts from:
"United States Patent 956,734 - Manufacturing Mixtures of Methane and Hydrogen
May, 1910
Inventor: Paul Sabatier, France
The present invention relates to a process for the manufacture of Methane or of mixtures of Methane and Hydrogen ... by passing water gas over heated nickel. ... The water gas is manufactured (by passing) super heated steam ... through coke (and/or) anthracite, wood, charcoal."
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Many things are going on in, and implied by, this Nobel laureate's US-patented steam-coal gasification technique. But, we'll try to keep our comments brief.
First, keep in mind that Methane, once we have it, can be directly catalyzed into liquid hydrocarbons; or, it can be tri-reformed with Carbon Dioxide to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons; or, it can be used to enhance the production of liquid hydrocarbons in some indirect Coal-to-Liquid conversion processes.
Hydrogen can also be directly used to hydrogenate Carbon Dioxide or to further hydrogenate the carbonaceous gases generated by Coal gasification, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons.
All as has been thoroughly, and authoritatively, documented in our dispatches to the West Virginia Coal Association.
But, there is also herein an element of sustainability and Carbon recycling, since, in addition to Coal (coke and anthracite), the CO2-recycling botanical products, wood and charcoal, can also be utilized.
So, from both Coal and Carbon Dioxide-recycling materials, we can produce substances, Methane and Hydrogen, that will enable us to convert more Coal and to recycle more Carbon Dioxide in the synthesis and manufacture of needed liquid and gaseous Hydrocarbons.
And, we have, basically, as herein officially, known all of that for a full century.
Do you, can you, now have any doubt that our shortages of liquid hydrocarbon fuels and our environmental fears about Carbon Dioxide are false; and, with all the dark implications the word might convey, artificial?
