We have continued to assert, in our reports, that our own US Government, through issuance of patents for technologies that convert Coal into hydrocarbon fuels, indirectly admits of the fact that it knows full well the true potentials for utilizing Coal to supply our need for the fuels we now lavishly support unpleasant OPEC regimes, and devastate our own economy and our coastlines and our oceans, for the supply of.
Our feelings behind that assertion, that our Government is thus sitting on it's thumbs, or doing worse with them, while we take unpleasant economic and environmental beatings, is compounded when we discover that, not only does our Government acknowledge the fact that Coal can be converted into hydrocarbon fuels, it even owns the rights to an as-yet unused process for doing so.
Herein, we see that our own US Department of Energy has, within it's possession, yet another technology wherein our domestic Coal can be efficiently and cleanly converted into a synthetic hydrocarbon gas, and, into the raw materials for liquid hydrocarbon synthesis.
Comment explaining further implications we think to be important follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,988,123 - Gasification of Carbonaceous Fuels
Date: October, 1976
Inventor: Ralph Coates, Utah
Assignee: The United States of America
Abstract: A process and apparatus for converting coal and other carbonaceous solids to an intermediate heating value fuel gas or to a synthesis gas. A stream of entrained pulverized coal is fed into the combustion stage of a three-stage gasifier along with a mixture of oxygen and steam at selected pressure and temperature. The products of the combustion stage pass into the second or quench stage where they are partially cooled and further reacted with water and/or steam. Ash is solidified into small particles and the formation of soot is suppressed by water/steam injections in the quench stage. The design of the quench stage prevents slag from solidifying on the walls. The products from the quench stage pass directly into a heat recovery stage where the products pass through the tube, or tubes, of a single-pass, shell and tube heat exchanger and steam is generated on the shell side and utilized for steam feed requirements of the process.
Claims: A process for converting carbonaceous solids to an intermediate heating value fuel gas or synthesis gas comprising: Mixing small particles of said carbonaceous solid with oxygen and a reaction moderator (and causing) partial combustion and reaction of said particles; (and) said reaction moderator is steam (and wherein said particles of carbonaceous solids are) entrained in a fluid selected from the group consisting of air, steam, recycled product gas, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide or a mixture of any two or more of them.
Summary: This invention relates to the gasification of carbonaceous solids such as coal, sawdust, and the like and more particularly to a process and apparatus utilizing a compact and simply constructed gasifier for converting small particles of such solids to an intermediate heating value fuel gas or to a synthesis gas.
While steam will generally be the preferred moderator, other gases such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide could be used in particular applications of the invention."
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In sum, our United States Government owns the rights to a technology, wherein Steam can be used to hydrogenate Coal and thereby generate a "synthesis gas", which, we submit, would then be very suitable for catalytic condensation, via the Fischer-Tropsch and related processes, into liquid hydrocarbons.
Moreover, the technology includes two apparent routes for the recycling of Carbon, since renewable and Carbon-recycling organic materials, i.e., "sawdust, and the like", and even Carbon Dioxide itself, as in "carbon dioxide could be used in particular applications of the invention", can be employed in what our Government refers to as a process "for converting carbonaceous solids to an intermediate heating value fuel gas or synthesis gas".
