United States Patent: 4158637
The above link relates to our post of May 28, 2010, wherein we detailed the invention, documented as US Patent 3,888,750, awarded to Pittsburgh's Westinghouse Corporation, of a method to economically generate Hydrogen by the electrical decomposition of Water, noting that their invention of such a process was directly related to another patent application for the conversion of Coal into hydrocarbons.
That patent application did result in the award of a patent, to Westinghouse, as we herein document.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 4,158,637 - Conversion of Coal into Hydrocarbons
Date: June, 1979
Inventor: Andrew Jones, Murrysville, PA
Assignee: Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Pittsburgh
Abstract: Hydrocarbons are formed of coal and water. The water is converted or dissociated separately into hydrogen and oxygen in a first chemical reactor by thermochemical and/or electrolytic processing. The resulting hydrogen is then reacted with the coal in a second reactor to produce the hydrocarbons. Residual carbon from the second reactor is reacted in a third reactor with oxygen derived from the first reactor to produce carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide is reacted with residual hydrogen from the second reactor or hydrogen from the first reactor to produce additional hydrocarbons. The energy for the endothermic and/or electrolytic processing in the reactors and for auxiliary equipment of the apparatus is supplied by a very high-temperature, gas-cooled, nuclear reactor by heat interchange with the cooling gas, helium. The cooling gas operates through heat-exchange means which isolates the cooling gas from the processing apparatus.
Claims: The process of converting coal and water at least into the hydrocarbon methane which comprises pulverizing the coal, dissociating the water, separately from the coal and by an electrolytic reaction, into hydrogen and forming sulfuric acid, and by a thermochemical reaction dissociating said sulfuric acid into oxygen, water and sulfur dioxide and circulating said sulfur dioxide to said electrolytic reaction, recovering said hydrogen, and reacting at least a portion of said recovered hydrogen with said pulverized coal to produce said methane ... .
The process ... wherein a residue of coal is left from the reaction of the coal and hydrogen, the said process including the steps of recovering oxygen produced by the dissociation in the thermochemical reaction, reacting at least a portion of said recovered oxygen with said residue of coal to produce carbon monoxide (and) reacting the carbon monoxide with hydrogen produced by the dissociation in the eletrolytic reaction to produce additional methane ... .
The process of converting water and coal into hydrocarbons which comprises pulverizing the coal, dissociating the water, separately from the coal, and by an electrolytic reaction, into hydrogen and forming sulfuric acid, and by a thermochemical reaction dissociating said sulfuric acid into oxygen, water and sulfur dioxide, recovering said oxygen, reacting a portion of said coal with a portion of said recovered oxygen to provide heat to pyrolize the remainder of said coal, recovering the volatile products produced by pyrolizing said coal, recovering said hydrogen, reacting the said recovered volatile products with a portion of said recovered hydrogen to produce syncrude, recovering the char resulting from said pyrolysis of the coal, and reacting said recovered char with another portion of said recovered hydrogen to produce methane."
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We close our excerpts here because we want to point out the fact, that, not only is Westinghouse positing to make Methane from Coal and Water, but, as well: "syncrude".
So, through reactions between Coal and Water, we can obtain both Methane and synthetic crude Oil.
And, we must note, yet again, that, once we have the Methane, generated from Coal and Water, we can react that Methane, in a tri-reforming process, with recovered Carbon Dioxide, as explained by Penn State University and others, to synthesize even more hydrocarbons.
Westinghouse, given some of their business interests at the time they wrote these patent applications, does posit the use of nuclear reactors to provide a portion of the needed energy to drive some of the reactions.
That is a practice we do not support. And, we note that even Westinghouse, in the full text of this and related patent documents, reveals that some of the chemical reactions involved are exothermic and themselves generate heat energy which could be harvested, and then internally recycled to help drive the total process.
Moreover, in similar and related Carbon conversion technologies developed by some of our US National Laboratories, such as Sandia and Los Alamos, as we have previously reported, the harnessing of environmental energy, such as Solar, Wind and Hydro, to accomplish the disassociation of Water has been posited as both feasible and desirable.
And, as we have pointed out, Coal-fired power plants, too, generate significant amounts of "waste" heat energy that, instead of being scrubbed away in cooling towers, might find useful secondary employment in a Carbon conversion process.