Patent US3743488
We remind you, first, of an earlier dispatch, wherein we alerted you to the report of "Microbial (Conversion) of Carbon Dioxide to Methane", by Associate Professor Nirupam Pal, at the California Polytechnic State University.
We also remind you of our many reports on bi-reforming and tri-reforming technologies, such as those, most especially, from Penn State University, wherein Carbon Dioxide can be reacted with Methane, CH4, to synthesize higher hydrocarbons.
The technology disclosed herein by the Fluor Corporation, an older chemical industry processing, contracting and servicing company, who will likely sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the spectrum of chemical plants flourishing along the banks of Coal Country rivers, seems, to us, a version of such reforming technology, wherein Carbon Dioxide can be reacted, recycled, with, among other gaseous hydrocarbons, Methane, to synthesize higher hydrocarbons such, as the versatile and quite valuable liquid fuel, and gasoline and plastics raw material, Methanol.
Comment follows very brief excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,743,488 - Synthesis Gas Generation Process
Date: July, 1973
Inventor: Marcel Bogart, California
Assignee: Fluor Corporation, Los Angeles
Abstract: Process for generating synthesis gas containing CO and H2 and useful in the production of ... methanol ... and the like.
This invention has to do with synthesis gas generation ... at lower overall cost.
Synthesis gas is a term applied to raw material gas streams containing hydrogen and carbon oxides which may be converted ... into products for which there is considerable commercial demand (such as) methanol.
A basic route to suitable synthesis gas is the steam reforming of hydrocarbon vapors which form a readily available and low cost source of hydrogen and carbon.
(Coal, gasified, in the first place, with or without Steam, does produce such "hydrocarbon vapors".)
Claims: In the process for generating high pressure synthesis gas containing hydrogen and carbon oxides from a reaction mixture comprising steam and hydrocarbon vapor."
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Methane - as can be manufactured from Carbon Dioxide via the Nobel-winning Sabatier process; or, by the action, as in Nirupam Pal's report, referred to above, of methanogenic bacteria on Carbon Dioxide; or, as in many of our earlier reports, via the Steam-, or Hydro-, gasification of Coal - is the primary "hydrocarbon vapor" specified in the chemical equations presented by Fluor in support of this patented process.
In any case, by adding Steam to "hydrocarbon vapors", which can themselves be produced from either Carbon Dioxide or Coal, we can, "at lower overall cost", produce a "raw material ... which may be converted (into) methanol", "for which there is considerable commercial demand".
We have everything we need to do all of that in United States Coal Country. Let's get started making a few of those things that are in such demand, out of our Coal, our Carbon Dioxide, and our Water; get the Texas oil field sequestration crowd and well-meaning, but misguided, environmentalists off our backs; and, just get on with our good lives.
