Wednesday, we sent you more confirmation that Carbon Dioxide could be recycled into hydrocarbons, when added to a process of indirect Coal conversion, wherein Coal is gasified with Steam to more efficiently generate an hydrogenated synthesis gas, in our report of "United States Patent 4,162,959 - Production of Hydrogenated Hydrocarbons", which was assigned, in 1979, to California's Occidental Petroleum.
Herein, we see that Occidental Petroleum had, prior to that invention, actually been at work for some time on the development of Coal, and Carbon, conversion technologies.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,698,882 - Conversion of Carbonaceous Solids into Pipeline Gas
Date: October, 1972
Inventor: Donald Garrett, et. al., California
Assignee: Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Los Angeles
Abstract: Continuous process for converting particulate carbonaceous materials to pipeline gas by rapid pyrolysis and separation of the material into a volatilized hydrocarbon phase followed by inflight compression, heating and contacting of the volatilized hydrocarbons with hydrogen to effectuate the conversion, with the char being utilized as a raw material source for the hydrogen.
Background: The art has long sought a continuous process for the conversion of carbonaceous materials such as coal and solid wastes containing organic material to pipeline gas. ... Gasification of such materials yields a product that can be handled with maximum convenience and minimum cost ... .
Where solid wastes containing organic matter are gasified, there are added ecological advantages ... .
It is the object of this invention to provide an efficient economical method of converting solid carbonaceous materials to pipeline gas.
In this invention we are treating carbonaceous materials which can be any solid carbonaceous materials containing organic matter such as coal, lignocellulose products and conventional solid wastes produced by our society.
Claims: A process for producing pipeline gas from carbonaceous material ... (wherein the catalyst is) selected from the group consisting of sulfides of cobalt-molybdenum oxides and tungsten oxides (and wherein) at least a portion of the (required) hydrogen ... is obtained by heating the char ... and contacting the char with steam ... to produce a synthesis gas."
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We submit that such a "synthesis gas", suitably hydrogenated with additional Hydrogen, which is, as herein, generated by reacting Coal "char with steam", could be catalytically condensed, via Fischer-Tropsch, or related, catalysis, into liquid hydrocarbons.
Or, since Occidental Petroleum, in the full text of their Disclosure, reveals that the gas generated contains a high percentage of Methane, it could be "tri-reformed", as per Penn State University, with even more Carbon Dioxide, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons.
That would be a further extension of the Carbon-recycling spirit of this invention, wherein renewable "lignocellulose products and conventional solid wastes produced by our society" are converted into such a "synthesis gas".
But, as with other, similar technologies we've earlier reported, "Coal" is the first "carbonaceous material" named by these scientists. And, it is first since Coal is the only carbonaceous material we currently have available to us in quantity sufficient to provide the economies of scale that would be needed, to make something like this feasible and realistic in the nearer term.
