We have lately been documenting a couple of important facts concerning the technologies that exist for converting our abundant Coal into gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons - products that can serve as direct replacements for natural gas and petroleum.
One fact is that a properly-designed and specified Coal conversion process, made commercially feasible and economically possible by the scale of Coal's available volume, can allow for the inclusion of other, biological and renewable, feed stocks.
Thus, elements of both sustainability and Carbon recycling can be included in an operation centered on the manufacture of liquid hydrocarbon fuels and substitute "natural" gas from Coal.
A second fact is that the Hydrogen needed to "hydrogenate" Coal, composed as it is primarily of Carbon, so that such hydrocarbon gases and liquids can be formed, can be derived from plain old Water.
In fact, the nature of the hydrocarbons formed from Coal can be specified to a certain extent by varying the amount of Steam that is used, as in this foreword extracted from the body of the text:
"The hydrogen/carbon monoxide ratio of the product gas can be controlled by varying the ratio of water ... .".
In any case, our own United States Government not only knows all of that to be true, but it has owned the technology for making it happen for more than thirty years, as the following excerpts from the enclosed link attest:
"United States Patent 3,988,123 - Gasification of Carbonaceous Solids
Date: October, 1976
Inventor: Ralph Coates, Utah
Assignee: The United States of America
The invention described herein was made in the course of Contract E(49-18)-1548 with the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration.
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. ... The products ...pass directly into a heat recovery stage where ... steam is generated ... 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 ... .
Background: This invention relates to the gasification of carbonaceous solids such as coal, sawdust, and the like ... to an intermediate heating value fuel gas or to a synthesis gas.
In applications such as the production of synthesis gas where it is desirable for the final product to contain a high ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide, the feed ... may be controlled to promote formation of additional hydrogen via the shift reaction. This reaction will be favored by feeding steam into the quench stage rather than water ... ."
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And, once we have such hydrogenated "synthesis gas", as we have more than fully documented, we can pass it through a Fischer-Tropsch, or related, catalytic reactor and synthesize liquid hydrocarbons.
Or, we could likely use the "fuel gas", if of an appropriately high Methane content - which seems feasible, since the addition of Steam can be adjusted to allow "for the final product to contain a high ratio of hydrogen" - in "bi-reforming" or "tri-reforming" processes, as explained most thoroughly for us so far by Penn State University, to react directly with Carbon Dioxide, recovered from the atmosphere or from flue gasses, and thereby synthesize even more higher hydrocarbons, such as Methanol.
