Shell Oil, in confirmation of earlier of our reports, herein documents, and our United States Government affirms, that any Carbon Dioxide generated in the initial gasification of Coal, in a process designed to generate a synthesis gas for use in the production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels, can be reclaimed and recycled back into the system, where it undergoes reactions with hot Coal and Steam, and is converted thereby into additional hydrocarbon synthesis gas.
Our read of the full Disclosure compels us to see this technology as an advancement on, if not a rip-off of, similar processes developed in Pittsburgh, PA, by the United States Bureau of Mines, an example of which we are documenting today in our separate report concerning: "United States Patent 3,463,623 - Process for Gasifying Caking Coals"; the rights to which were, supposedly, assigned, in 1969, to the United States of America and the people who comprise it.
That issue is not moot. This technology is likely now being reduced by Shell to commercial practice; but, in their Bintulu, Malaysia, Coal hydrogenation and gasification facility, about which we have previously reported.
Moreover, the full Disclosure also contains within it a misdirecting statement which we will assume, for the sake of amity, to be an inadvertent misprint. Those are not, somewhat surprisingly, we have discovered, all that uncommon in published United States Patents; at least in those US Patents concerning technologies for the conversion of Coal into more versatile hydrocarbons, which are the ones we have been studying.
We are not reproducing or pointing out that erroneous statement. The specifics of the technology are accurately conveyed in our excerpts, with comment appended, from the link to and attached file of:
"United States Patent 5,431,703 - Method of Quenching Synthesis Gas
Date: July, 1995
Inventor: Lloyd Clomburg, et. al., Texas
Assignee: Shell Oil Company, Houston
Abstract: The invention is a process for quenching a first synthesis gas mixture containing synthesis gas, molten fly ash, water and carbon dioxide and producing additional synthesis gas (by) passing first synthesis gas mixture into a ... mixture of pulverized coal in a ... carbon dioxide carrier gas (and) endothermically reacting the pulverized coal with the water and the carbon dioxide to produce additional synthesis gas.
The gases resulting from a partial combustion or gasification of coal have value as ... starting materials for synthesis of chemicals and fuels.
Summary: The invention is a process (which includes) endothermically reacting the pulverized coal with the water vapor and the carbon dioxide in the first synthesis gas mixture thus producing additional synthesis gas consisting of hydrogen and carbon monoxide."
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We hope that, by now, it is becoming clear:
Carbon Dioxide can be reacted with hot Coal and Steam, and thereby made to produce "gases ... (which) have value as ... starting materials for synthesis of chemicals and fuels."