Very nearly forty years ago, in 1973, our US Government affirmed the 1912 assessment by Europe's Nobel Committee, in the award of their Prize in Chemistry to Paul Sabatier, that Carbon Dioxide can be directly and efficiently converted into Methane.
Unfortunately, that affirmation could easily have been lost, and gone unnoticed, since, in what appears to be the official US Government record of the event, a critical piece of information in the title was apparently misspelled.
In the excerpts following, with comment appended, we reproduce the Title exactly as it seems to appear, as it came up for us, in the official records:
"United States Patent 3,766,027 - Method and Apparatus for CO Conversion to Methane
Date: October, 1973
Inventor: Derek Gregory, IL
Assignee: Institute of Gas Technology, Chicago
Abstract: A process of fixation and conversion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or other sources to produce methane and oxygen. Carbon dioxide is scrubbed from a CO2 -containing source and separated by process of chemical concentration. A special cell is provided in which hydrogen is produced and reacted with the separated CO2 at methanation conditions to produce methane.
Claim: A process for the conversion of carbon dioxide to methane ... .
Objects: It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a process which can help to maintain the level of CO2 in the atmosphere or other sources at an acceptable level, and convert it to methane as a basic fuel source of energy, and as a feed stock for industrial processes for production of a wide range of organic chemicals.
It is another object of this invention to recover carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or other sources such as combustion flue gases.
It is another object of this invention to conserve the world supply of fossil hydrocarbons as fuel and industrial process feed stocks.
It is another object of this invention to provide a process for the fixation of atmospheric or other carbon dioxide ... ."
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Now, far be it from us to suggest that the mis-labeling of the Title might have been, somehow, for some reason, deliberate.
We will be unsurprised, however, should that someday prove to have been the case. There is a big difference between Carbon Monoxide, "CO", and Carbon Dioxide.
Regardless: We can, as confirmed herein by our own United States Government, convert Carbon Dioxide, whether recovered from the atmosphere or from industrial flue gasses, into Methane.
Once we have the Methane, if we haven't stuffed all our CO2 down a leaky West Texas rat hole and can't, ourselves, thus make any Methane with it in Coal Country, we can, as we have documented, and as we will continue to document, convert that Methane directly into liquid hydrocarbon fuels; or, we can utilize that Methane to improve the productivity of some indirect processes of Coal conversion to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels; or, we can react that Methane, in bi-reforming and tri-reforming processes, with even more Carbon Dioxide and thus produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
