Patent US3763205
Yesterday, we sent you information concerning the invention of a process for making hydrocarbon synthesis gas from Coal, "United States Patent 2,699,384 - Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen from Carbonaceous Solids", which was developed by West Virginia scientists working for E.I. DuPont.
Herein, we see that DuPont had assigned another of it's West Virginia scientists to develop a method wherein Carbon Dioxide could be profitably recycled, in a related process for the production of a synthesis gas designed specifically for catalytic condensation into Methanol.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,763,205 - Methanol Process with Recycle
Date: October, 1973
Inventor: Ralph Green, Charleston, WV
Assignee: E.I. DuPont, DE
Abstract: Methanol is made by a process that involves feeding natural gas, steam, a recycle stream and optionally carbon dioxide, to a single bed reformer.
In summary, the process of the invention involves feeding ... Natural gas, steam and optionally but preferably carbon dioxide ... to single bed type reformer ... .
(Ranges for the ratios each are provided, with the amount of Steam increasing, for instance, with increasing for the preferred Carbon Dioxide. - JtM)
The reformer output is called synthesis gas (and it) can be fed (prior to catalysis) into water heater boilers ... to recover heat values (and) generate the necessary steam for the reformer feed.
(In other words, in a way similar to other CO2 recycling and Coal conversion technologies we've documented for you, some steps in the process generate heat energy which can be reclaimed and then used to help drive other reaction steps in the system. - JtM)
Claims: A process for making methanol comprising: Feeding natural gas, steam and a recycle stream ... to a single bed type catalytic reformer (wherein) the feed ... also contains carbon dioxide."
----------
In the full disclosure, the "natural gas" is identified as, primarily, Methane - which we can synthesize, using the 1912 Nobel-winning Sabatier technique now being employed, all as we have documented, by NASA, from Carbon Dioxide.
Or, again as we have documented, Methane can be manufactured via the Steam gasification of Coal.
Moreover, the Methanol produced by this decades-old West Virginia technology can be further converted into Gasoline, according to ExxonMobil's MTG(r) process; or, it can be used as a raw material for the manufacture of plastics, where the Carbon Dioxide consumed in the original Methanol synthesis would be permanently sequestered.
In any case, we have known, as herein officially, in West Virginia, and in at least one office of the United States Government, for very nearly four decades, that Carbon Dioxide, as arises from our use of Coal in a very small way relative to natural sources of emission such as volcanism, can be profitably and productively reclaimed and recycled into liquid fuel.