Our ability to react, to "reform", Methane with Carbon Dioxide, to synthesize higher hydrocarbons, was actually, at one time, so well-known and understood that, we are now led to surmise, industrial equipment manufacturers were making ready to supply a Carbon Dioxide recycling industry targeted on producing liquid hydrocarbons from Carbon Dioxide, with the processing equipment to do so.
Herein, we see that, four decades ago, a Cleveland, OH, manufacturer had already, as confirmed by our own United States Government, as it is embodied in the Patent Office, designed a better Carbon Dioxide recycling mouse trap.
As a foreword, the assignee of this invention, Midland-Ross, was at one time, according to The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, "a diversified manufacturer of consumer and industrial products, aerospace and electronic components, and capital goods". Like many similar and long-established manufacturers of true value and worth, however, Midland-Ross fell victim to the jackal packs of corporate raiders that roamed the business landscape late in the last century, and, even though, in "1981 Midland-Ross, with its international headquarters in Cleveland, had 19 divisions and subsidiaries operating 57 plants in 18 states and 9 foreign countries", by July of 1986, what remained of the company was bought by Forstmann Little & Company, and the Cleveland offices were closed.
Maybe they had just made Some People uncomfortable by their invention, a decade before their woes, of this, an apparatus and method for making hydrocarbons from Carbon Dioxide.
Some excerpts, with comment appended:
"United States Patent 3,617,227 - Apparatus for Catalytic Reforming
Date: November, 1971
Inventor: Donald Beggs, OH
Assignee: Midland-Ross Corporation, Toledo
Abstract: This disclosure relates to an apparatus for the catalytic reforming of gaseous hydrocarbon that may use steam and/or carbon dioxide as the reforming oxidant. ... Stoichiometric reforming is achieved without carbon deposition and degradation of the catalyst ... .
In the field of endothermic catalytic reforming of gaseous hydrocarbons, such as methane ... to produce a reformed gas containing CO and H2, steam is the reforming oxidant most commonly employed, and CO2, or mixtures of steam and CO2, are sometimes employed.
I have discovered an apparatus for catalytic reforming that enables stoichiometric reforming to be successfully achieved, using steam and/or CO2 as reforming oxidants, without encountering carbon deposition or degradation of the catalyst."
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So, in 1971, they knew, in Cleveland, that we could make a synthesis has consisting of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide, through the proper reaction of Carbon Dioxide with Methane, with or without added Steam.
Such a synthesis gas would, we assert, be ideally suited for Fischer-Tropsch, or related, catalytic condensation into liquid hydrocarbons.
Moreover, it seems likely this astute Ohio company would have, in 1971, known, just like, as in other of our reports, NASA knows today, that Methane can itself be made from CO2 via the 1912 Nobel-winning Sabatier process; and/or via the straightforward Steam-gasification of Coal.
And, almost better, they overcame a problem now being noted, as we have reported, by Swiss and Israeli scientists currently developing, or redeveloping, very similar Carbon Dioxide-Methane reaction technology: Carbon deposition on catalyst surfaces.
As we earlier suggested to be feasible and practical: "reforming" can "be successfully achieved, using steam and/or CO2 as reforming oxidants, without encountering carbon deposition or degradation of the catalyst".
