United States Patent Application: 0100205856
First, we must make note of the fact, that, for whatever inscrutable reason, our United States Government has transferred operational control of at least some of it's critical USDOE National Laboratories to various public and private entities.
In the case of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, management has been transferred to "Los Alamos National Security, LLC", which, according to various web-based sources, is made up of the companies Bechtel National, Babcock and Wilcox, and URS Energy & Construction; and, of the University of California.
And, for whatever other inscrutable reason, the ownership rights to patented technologies - developed by USDOE scientists, in the employ of the US Government and working in those US tax-funded National Laboratories, wherein the management has been so farmed out - are being assigned to those artificial management entities.
That is the case in this United States Patent Application, wherein we see that a USDOE scientist employed at the USDOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, a scientist about whose Carbon conversion work we have previously reported, and a colleague have developed a practical method for converting Carbon Dioxide, reclaimed not from smokestacks but from the atmosphere itself, into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent Application 20100205856A1 - Synthetic Fuels from Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Date: August, 2010
Inventor: William Kubic and Jeffrey Martin, Los Alamos, NM
Assignee: Los Alamos National Security, LLC
This invention was made with government support under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Abstract: The present invention is directed to providing a method of producing synthetic fuels and organic chemicals from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide gas is extracted from the atmosphere, hydrogen gas is obtained by splitting water, a mixture of the carbon dioxide gas and the hydrogen gas (synthesis gas) is generated, and the synthesis gas is converted into synthetic fuels and/or organic products. The present invention is also directed to utilizing a nuclear power reactor to provide power for the method of the present invention.
Claims: A method for producing a chemical product comprising the steps of:extracting carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere; producing hydrogen gas; combining said carbon dioxide gas and said hydrogen gas to produce a synthesis gas; and converting said synthesis gas to said product.
(And) wherein said method is powered by a power source selected from the group consisting of nuclear power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power, wind power, photovoltaic solar power, thermal solar power, and combinations thereof.
(And) wherein said product is selected from the group consisting of fuel, diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline, petrochemicals, plastics, butane, methanol, ethylene, propylene, aromatic compounds, petrochemical derivatives, derivatives thereof, and mixtures thereof."
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We'll forgo reproduction of technical details. There is little in them that we haven't previously, from the USDOE and other sources, documented.
Environmental energy, such as "hydroelectric (and) wind power" can be harnessed to convert "carbon dioxide gas" into "diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline, ... methanol', and a bunch of other goodies.
We've got those energies in some abundance in parts of US Coal Country, but, since this a practical proposition anywhere we have an atmosphere, then anywhere you could scrape together a little sunshine would be suitable, as well.