In our dispatch of 7/30, we reported on: "US Patent 3,988,237 - Integrated Coal Hydrocarbonization and Gasification of Char", which was issued, in October of 1976, to a group of West Virginia scientists in the employ of New York's old Union Carbide Corporation.
In the disclosure of that technology, consistent with other reputable sources we have documented for you, it was revealed that Steam could be used in the gasification of Coal to produce an hydrogenated synthesis gas which could then be catalyzed into hydrocarbon "gaseous and liquid fuel products".
Big Oil must have gotten wind of what was going on that year down in South Charleston, and jumped in.
Via the US Patent we enclose herein, we see that Exxon, too, understood the potentials for utilizing Steam to hydrogenate Coal, and to thus synthesize more versatile hydrocarbons, and, in the very same month of the very same year, were awarded a US Patent of their own for very similar technology.
And, hinting at other technologies we have earlier reported, they indicate that Carbon Dioxide, too, can be utilized in this Coal hydrogenation and conversion process.
The point can be missed in the full Disclosure, so allow us this brief advance excerpt as a revealing foreword:
"The gaseous medium used to suspend the solids and hydrogasify the carbonaceous feed solids in the transfer line reaction zone may be pure molecular hydrogen but for reasons of economy of operation will preferably be a synthesis gas including hydrogen and carbon oxides produced by reacting carbon with steam under gasification conditions."
That passage actually sums up the whole thing, in any case. Coal is reacted "with steam under gasification conditions" to produce both Methane and, don't lose sight of this fact, an hydrogenated synthesis gas from which liquid fuels can be condensed.
Additional comment follows further excerpts from:
"United States Patent 3,985,519 - Hydrogasification Process
Date: October, 1976
Inventor: Theodore Kalina, et. al., NJ
Assignee: Exxon Research and Engineering Company, NJ
Abstract: Subdivided carbonaceous feed solids containing volatilizable hydrocarbons are hydrogasified by heating the solids to at least minimum hydrogasification temperature while in dilute phase suspension in a gas containing molecular hydrogen and in contact with subdivided hot solids having a temperature greater than minimum hydrogasification temperature. The feed and hot solids are passed with the hydrogen-containing gas through a transfer line hydrogasification zone having a length which, for the velocity of the solids passage therethrough, limits the residence of the solids therein to the time necessary for devolatilization of the carbonaceous feed solids and for conversion of a predetermined minor proportion of the carbon of the feed solids to methane. Suitably from about one to about 50 mol percent of the carbon in the carbonaceous feed solids is converted to methane. Preferably the hydrogen-containing gas is a synthesis gas produced in a fluidized bed steam gasification reaction zone into which carbonaceous solids from the transfer line hydrogasification zone are charged after the separation therefrom of product gases containing methane.
Claims: A process for the production of a methane-containing gas from coal ... which comprises: suspending hot solid particles and carbonaceous coal solids containing volatilizable hydrocarbon constituents in dilute phase in a gas stream containing hydrogen gas in a ratio of from about 3 to about 20 parts by weight of said particles per part of said solids, said particles having a temperature in excess of a minimum hydrogasification temperature of about 1200.degree. F., said carbonaceous solids having a temperature below said minimum hydrogasification temperature, and said particles containing sufficient available heat to raise the temperature of said carbonaceous solids to at least said minimum hydrogasification temperature; passing said gas stream containing said particles and said carbonaceous solids through a transfer line hydrogasifier at a pressure of from about 40 to about 1000 psia, the residence time of said carbonaceous solids in said hydrogasifier being limited to a period sufficient for the devolatilization of said carbonaceous solids and for the conversion of from one to about 50 mol percent of the carbon in said carbonaceous solids into methane; and withdrawing from said hydrogasifier a raw product gas containing methane produced within said hydrogasifier.
2. A process as defined by claim 1 wherein said gas stream comprises a synthesis gas containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
3. A process as defined by claim 1 wherein said particles comprise coal char.
This invention relates to processes for the production of methane from carbonaceous solids such as coal and is particularly concerned with gasification processes including a hydrogasification step in which hydrogen reacts with carbon to produce methane.
To produce methane from carbonaceous material ... a source of hydrogen is required. This hydrogen is generally produced by the ... steam gasification reaction: C(oal - JtM) + H2O = CO + H2."
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We close our excerpts here since the very lengthy full Disclosure is tediously complicated in the extreme.
In it's distilled essence, Exxon reveals that, in a process which can be made to be self-powered, by generating energy from Coal, both Methane and an hydrogenated synthesis gas can be created by reacting hot Coal with Steam.
That is the sum of it. Their focus is primarily on the production of Methane, as opposed to liquid hydrocarbon synthesis gas, and that's fine by us.
Remember: Once we have Methane, as made herein via the Steam gasification of Coal, we can react that Methane, as per Penn State University, and others, with Carbon Dioxide, reclaimed from flue gasses or the atmosphere, in "bi-reforming" and "tri-reforming" reactions to synthesize such precious liquid hydrocarbons as Methanol.
And, as we have also documented, and as we will document further, Methane alone can be catalytically condensed into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
All of that all can start, as herein detailed by Exxon and confirmed by our US Government, by using Steam to gasify Coal.
