Since we are, today, sending along, via separate dispatch, information concerning technology developed by Chevron which would reduce energy transportation costs, by converting Coal into crude liquid hydrocarbons at facilities attached to, or nearby, remote mine sites, we see, herein, that the US Navy has addressed the same, or broadly-related, issue as it pertains to the recycling of Carbon Dioxide.
First, to re-establish some preliminaries, Carbon Dioxide can be converted into Methane, CH4, by the 1912 Nobel Prize-winning Sabatier process. And, as we have documented now from many sources, especially Penn State University, once we have Methane, we can react it with more Carbon Dioxide, in bi-reforming and tri-reforming processes, and thereby synthesize liquid hydrocarbons.
Carbon Dioxide and Water, which are the starting materials for such processes, are, of course, available nearly everywhere.
Further, much, of course, has lately been made of the potentials for utilizing solar energy to help provide for our nation's energy requirements.
However, in a way roughly analogous to the fact that deposits of Coal are often concentrated in locations not convenient to the places where those resources can be best employed - to generate electricity to run the air conditioners in Florida, for instance - the sun doesn't always shine in places like Wheeling or Pittsburgh.
And, our United States Navy herein details a way in which the efficiency of collecting, converting and transporting Solar energy can be improved, which is:
To use Solar energy, as in technologies we've earlier documented to be feasible, in reports concerning such things as the "Green Freedom" concept under development, by scientists such as Rich Diver, at the USDOE's Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, to convert ubiquitous atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and abundant Water into more easily and more economically transportable liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
But, there is even an additional energy-conserving and transforming concept entrained in this US Navy technology:
As seen in earlier of our reports concerning similar and related technology, some of the specific chemical reactions involved in the overall process of reacting Carbon Dioxide with Methane and/or Water, to generate hydrocarbons or hydrocarbon synthesis gas, are exothermic. And, the heat energy generated by those reactions can be reclaimed and recycled within the system to, along with collected Solar heat energy, drive other reactions required by this Carbon Dioxide-to-Hydrocarbon Syngas technology.
Comment, emphasizing implications which should be obvious, follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 4,347,891 - Thermochemical Energy Transport Process
Date: September, 1982
Inventor: Talbot Chubb, VA
Assignee: The USA as represented by the Secretary of the Navy
Abstract: The CO2--CH4 reforming-methanation chemical cycle provides ... means of transporting energy, such as solar energy, from the place of generation to the place of use.
Claims: A method of transporting thermal energy from a source of heat to a place of use (which comprises):
(Reacting) a gas mixture of CO, CO2 and CH4 ... to produce a reformed gas mixture of primarily CO2, H2, CO and H2O; transporting said gas mixture to said plate of use; (and) reacting ... said reformed gas mixture in the presence of a second catalyst to produce a substantially methanated gas mixture and thermal energy.
(Again, note: Some of the exothermic reactions"produce" potentially-useful "thermal energy".)
Description and Background: This invention is concerned with thermochemical-energy transport processes and, more particularly, with the CO2 -- CH4 reforming-mathanation chemical cycle of transporting energy, such as solar energy, to a place of use from a place of generation.
Thermochemical energy transport loops can provide an effective means of transportation energy. Such closed cycle loops, using chemical fluids which undergo reversible heat-absorbing and -liberating reactions are key elements in energy transport systems, whether solar, nuclear, or other energy sources are being harnessed.
The invention herein disclosed has been developed in conjunction with a complete system of harnessing solar energy gathered from scattered solar collectors and transported to a central energy-storage station from which on-demand power is generated as needed ... .
This invention is particularly concerned with modifications and improvements in the CO2 reforming (and)methanation chemical cycle, CO2 + CH4 (=) 2CO + 2H2 (,which) I have found to be particularly well-suited to the collection and transport of solar energy... .
(In) the presence of a suitable catalyst. CO and H2 react exothermically and form CH4 and CO2 reaction products, the heat that is liberated being used to create process heat for later conversion to electricity or other uses ... ."
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Let's not miss the point:
Instead of reacting "CO and H2" to again form "CH4 and CO2" - - which, in this US Navy technology, are recycled back into the loop to again be reduced into "CO and H2", and thereby provide a conduit for the cyclic transmission of renewable Solar heat energy - - we could catalytically react those gases in a Fischer-Tropsch, or related, catalytic processor, and condense them into liquid hydrocarbons.
Further: If we are harnessing Solar heat to drive those processes that require an input of energy, then we could, we submit, just as well harness Solar heat energy to drive a Sabatier processor, which would convert even more CO2 into the CH4 that is required, in the first place, to react with CO2 to make the CO and H2 hydrocarbon synthesis gas.
And, again, it is similar in those respects to, as we've documented, NASA's plans to make rocket fuel out of CO2 and H2O on the planet Mars; or, to technologies developed, again as we have documented for you, by technical contractors such as United Technologies and Grumman, for our US Department of Defense.
However, in those DOD technologies, it is posited to utilize dangerous ship-board nuclear reactors to drive the processes.
Via the three decades-old public document we enclose herein, the Navy seems to be embracing, in a way similar to the USDOE at the Sandia and Los Alamos labs, the more sensible, and far safer, alternative of using Solar power to recycle atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.
And, finally, it must be noted that the products we can make from CO and H2 synthesis gas can include hydrocarbons that, instead of being used as fuels, can be employed in the manufacture of certain plastics, wherein the CO2 consumed in the initial generation of the syngas, via the Sabatier reaction into, and then, as herein, with, Methane, would be forever "sequestered".