We continue to wade through the swamp of Coal liquefaction, and related Carbon conversion, technologies developed by US-based Big Oil companies in the years immediately following WWII, with yet another refinement of the art accomplished by Standard Oil of Indiana.
The sole inventor named in this submission, too, is someone we have previously cited, in reports of his Coal conversion work as part of a team of Standard Oil scientists obviously assigned to advance well-established German and Japanese CoalTL technology.
This example contains within it yet more evidence that Carbon Dioxide can be productively employed as additional raw material in a hydrocarbon fuel production process that is, in light of what should be obvious economics of supply, centered on Coal.
Note that it's employment in this Coal conversion technology is based on what appear to be a tri-reforming reaction, as described best for us so far, as we've been reporting, by Penn State University, wherein CO2 is combined with an appropriate amount of Methane - which can itself be synthesized, via the 1912 Sabatier process, from CO2, or, via Steam-gasification, from Coal; and, with plain old H2O.
Also, this work was, no doubt, precedent to other, later, Standard Oil developments, about which we have already reported, such as "United States Patent 2,676,156 - Preparation of Synthesis Gas", which was awarded to Standard Oil of Delaware, in 1954, for a technology wherein Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Water could be reacted, in varying amounts, to generate synthesis gases tailored for catalytic condensation into a variety of liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
And, finally, perhaps most pointedly, the technology disclosed herein isn't really about generating a hydrocarbon synthesis gas from Coal or Carbon Dioxide, it being, apparently, almost a given for Standard Oil and our US Government's Patent Office that we can do so. That straightforward fact is noted almost as an aside.
It is simply a process for, as Standard Oil puts it in this advance excerpt: "the production of gasoline ... from hydrogen and carbon monoxide mixtures".
Additional comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 2,417, 164 - Hydrocarbon Synthesis
Date: March, 1947
Inventor: Harold Huber, KY
Assignee: Standard Oil Company, Chicago
Abstract: This invention relates to hydrocarbon synthesis and it pertains more particularly to an improved process and means for producing normally liquid hydrocarbons from carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
The hydrogen-carbon monoxide mixture can be ... obtained ... from natural gas which may consist chiefly of methane (or) from coal (and) other carbonaceous materials.
When natural gas is used, the synthesis gas may be prepared by reacting natural gas, carbon dioxide and steam.
Claims: The process for the production of gasoline ... from hydrogen and carbon monoxide mixtures."
