United States Patent Application: 0090205254
Via separate dispatch today, we are sending along report of:United States Patent: 4002658; wherein Ford Motor Company reveals how we can synthesize Methane from relatively high-Sulfur, and, thus, presumably, lower-cost Coal.
Further, as in just one example out of many we've so far provided you, we see in: Illinois Recycles CO2 to Methane | Research & Development | News; that we can also synthesize Methane from reclaimed Carbon Dioxide.
Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch, we find that Australian scientists, at least one of which, John Zhu, is revealed by web-based sources to be on the faculty of the University of Queensland's School of Engineering, in Brisbane, have developed yet another version of tri-reforming technology, wherein Carbon Dioxide, reclaimed from whatever source, can be reacted with Methane - such as might be inexpensively produced from lower-grade Coal by the above-noted Ford Motor process, or, from Carbon Dioxide itself via a Sabatier-type process similar in concept to the "Illinois" technology - and with Water in the form of Steam, and made thereby to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
Comment, concerning similar technology we've earlier reported, follows excerpts from that initial link to:
"US Patent Application 20090205254 - Converting Methane Gas to a Liquid Fuel
Date: August, 2009
Inventors: Zhonghua John Zhu, et. al. Australia
Abstract: A method for converting a methane gas to liquid fuel forms a non-thermal plasma with radicals and directs the plasma over a catalyst to convert the radicals to higher hydrocarbons in liquid form. The method can be performed in a reactor such as a microwave plasma reactor, or a pulsed corona discharge plasma reactor. A system for performing the method includes a methane gas source, a reactant gas source, a reactor and a catalyst.
Claims: A method for converting a methane gas to a liquid fuel comprising:providing a reactor having a reaction chamber;providing a flow of methane gas and a flow of a reactant gas into the reaction chamber;providing a catalyst in the reaction chamber;producing a non-thermal plasma in the reaction chamber to convert the methane gas and the reactant gas into radicals; and directing the radicals over the catalyst to couple the radicals into hydrocarbons in liquid form.
(And) wherein the reactor comprises a microwave plasma reactor or a pulsed corona discharge plasma reactor.
(And) wherein the liquid fuel comprises methanol, gasoline ... or diesel.
(And) wherein the flow of the reactant gas comprises CO2, O2 and H2O."
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Without belaboring the details: We can make "methanol, gasoline" and "diesel", out of Methane and a "reactant gas" consisting of a mixture of Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen and Water.
And, these Australian scientists propose accomplishing the transformation by utilizing "a microwave plasma reactor or a pulsed corona discharge plasma reactor" which we perceive to be very similar in concept to the "dielectric barrier discharge", low-temperature and low-energy plasma CO2-Methane reaction technology, being developed, as we've many times documented for the West Virginia Coal Association, by scientists in Switzerland and Israel, and other nations as well.
In any case, as confirmed herein:
Once we have Methane, from whatever source, we can react it with Carbon Dioxide, also reclaimed from whatever source, and thereby synthesize "methanol, gasoline", and/or "diesel".
Or, we could just reclaim our Carbon Dioxide from our Coal Country smokestacks, and, all at our Coal Country expense, ship it down to West Texas, just to help those good ole boys out with their secondary petroleum scrounging.
Unless we all wake up to the fact that Carbon Dioxide, as arises in a small way, relative to natural sources of emission, such as volcanoes, from our varied and productive uses of Coal, is, as herein, a valuable raw material resource from which, in combination with Methane, we can make "methanol, gasoline", and/or "diesel", we're all going to wind up getting herded, or rustled, by unjust Cap & Trade taxation and mandated Geologic Sequestration, into that West Texas oil patch corral.