First, as indicated by a number of web-based resources, the named inventor, one Paul Ahner, in this United States Patent Application, which discloses a technique wherein Carbon Dioxide can be utilized in a process of Coal gasification, and be converted therein, along with Coal, into a synthesis gas suitable for catalytic condensation into liquid hydrocarbons, was once a resident of Pittsburgh, PA; where he worked, in the employ of the former Gulf Oil Corporation, as a scientist focused on Coal and Carbon conversion technology.
We are, in fact, including, as a postscript, further documentation of Ahner's Coal conversion and Gulf Oil background.
Now living in Oklahoma, Ahner seems to be working as an independent consultant to the petroleum industry.
And, we presume the very recent Patent Application we enclose herein to be, perhaps, derivative, or based on, earlier and similar Coal and Carbon conversion developments made by Gulf Oil, some of which we have documented for you.
Further, in what seems to us an unpleasantly grasping attempt to enable the ongoing use, by Big Oil, of all their drilling and pumping equipment, Ahner prefers to describe his process in terms of an underground, in situ, Coal gasification process - which, unless the Coal seam is so deep that it can't be mined on a practical basis, and is thus separated from the surface and from groundwater by thousands of feet of rock strata, would seem to us to pose grave risks of environmental contamination - as opposed to mining the Coal and then processing it in a controlled and safe industrial environment on the surface.
In any case, the chemical reactions involved would remain the same, wherever they occurred.
And, brief comment follows further revelation of the fact that Carbon Dioxide can be utilized as a resource in a hydrocarbon synthesis and energy production process based on Coal:
"United States Patent Application; Publication Number: US2009/0145843A1 - Method for Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emission and Water Contamination Potential while Increasing Product Yields from Carbon Gasification and Energy Production
Publication Date: June, 2009
Inventor: Paul F. Ahner, Tulsa
Abstract: Carbon dioxide from a process which oxidizes a carbon containing fuel is separated and reduced to carbon monoxide using a carbon dioxide reduction reactor coupled to a water gas shift reactor to simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase the product yield of clean fuels.
Background and Field: This invention describes an improved method for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions and improving product yields from processes which use fossil fuels to generate energy and/or processes which produce low carbon dioxide emission fuel gas, hydrogen fuel, and liquid fuels or fertilizers using synthesis gas as the feedstock.
This invention uses carbon dioxide as a feedstock to upgrade it to a useful product ... .
This invention proposes to convert the carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide which is a valuable synthesis gas feedstock for producing liquid fuels ... .
This conversion is accomplished by the reverse Boudard reaction, which involves contacting carbon dioxide with carbon (such as coal, heavy oil and bitumen) at high temperature.
This invention promises to decrease carbon dioxide emissions in a synthesis gas to liquid fuel process and other said processes by converting the by-product carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide via contact with hot carbon."
------------
We close our excerpts here since there is little, really, new in the full Disclosure, relative to other authoritative references we have earlier brought to your attention.
In sum: Carbon Dioxide, no matter from what source we obtain it, can be reduced to, and increase the production of, Carbon Monoxide through reaction with red-hot Coal.
Such Carbon Monoxide can then be reacted with Hydrogen - - obtained, for instance, from the catalyzed electrolysis or photolysis of Water, or, from reactions between Steam and hot Coal - - in known synthesis processes, such as the venerable Fischer-Tropsch method, and be catalytically condensed thereby into liquid hydrocarbons.
Burying Carbon Dioxide, or taxing our vital Coal-use industries out of existence because they generate such a potentially valuable byproduct, is beyond, in the word of one Penn State University scientist whom we've previously quoted, "ridiculous".
PS: As mentioned in our introductory notes, following, without further comment, is additional documentation of Paul Ahner's Coal science and Coal conversion bona fides, and thus credibility; and, of his Gulf Oil professional experience in Coal processing technology:
Structural characterization of filter cake solids from a solvent-refined coal process (SRC-1)
January, 1980
Leonidas Petrakis, Paul F. Ahner and David Grady; Gulf Research and Development; Pittsburgh, PA
Abstract: A study has been undertaken to characterize the structural aspects of the solids that have been recovered from solvent refined coal (SRC-I). Both the mineral matter as well as the organic materials are characterized through the utilization of various analytical techniques: chemical analysis, X-ray techniques, optical microscopy and electron microscopy studies, surface area measurements, density gradient separation, electron spin resonance, magnetic susceptibility and ESCA studies. A comparison is being made of the solids from this particular process with solids derived from another SRC process. Some of the main findings of this study include the following. Major minerals are pyrrhotite and α-quartz. Organic inerts consist of fusinite, semifusinite, micrinite and macrinite. The least dense fraction is essentially organic, while the high density fraction contains much of the pyrrhotite. The e.s.r.-free-radical measurements show that the solids contain few reactive species.