We earlier sent you information, now posted on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site as:
Japan CO2 + Methane = Hydrocarbon Syngas | Research & Development | News; which included details of:
"United States Patent: 6340437 - Preparing Synthesis Gas by Autothermal Reforming; 2002; Inventor: Fuyuki Yagi, et. al.; Assignee: Chiyoda Corporation, Japan", a technology which enables a "hydrocarbon synthesis gas" to "be produced by reacting (methane) with steam and/or carbon dioxide".
We also provided additional information in that report concerning the, perhaps, unfamiliar Chiyoda Corporation, which confirmed them to be a substantial and long-established business enterprise.
Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch and the following excerpts, we see that Fuyuki Yagi and his Chiyoda Corporation team had been at work on Carbon Dioxide recycling technologies, very similar to the "reforming" processes described, as in many of our other reports, by Penn State University scientists Chunsan Song and Craig Grimes, for some length of time before issuance of US Patent 6340437.
Comment follows excerpts from the initial link in this dispatch to:
"United States Patent 6,312,660 - Process for Preparing Synthesis Gas
Date: November, 2001
Inventor: Fuyuki Yagi, et. al., Japan
Assignee: Chiyoda Corporation, Japan
Abstract: Disclosed is a process for producing a synthesis gas by reacting a carbon-containing organic compound with steam and/or carbon dioxide using a catalyst whose carbon deposition activity is considerably suppressed. The catalyst is characterized in that it comprises a carrier formed of a metal oxide, and at least one catalytic metal selected from rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, palladium and platinum and supported on the carrier ... .
Claims: A process for producing a synthesis gas, comprising reacting a carbon-containing organic compound with steam and carbon dioxide in the presence of a catalyst (as detailed, and wherein said carbon-containing organic compound is natural gas.
Field and Background: The present invention relates to a process for the production of a synthesis gas (which) is a mixed gas containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide and is widely used as a raw material for the synthesis of ... methanol.
Such a synthesis gas may be produced by reaction of a hydrocarbon with steam and/or carbon dioxide in the presence of a catalyst. In the reaction, however, carbon deposition reactions occur as side reactions to cause carbon deposition which brings about a problem of catalyst poisoning.
The raw materials for the carbon deposition are a carbon-containing organic compound used as a raw material and CO produced in situ. The carbon deposition is accelerated as the partial pressures of these raw materials increase. Therefore, it is possible to reduce the amount of the carbon deposition by increasing the feed amount of steam and carbon dioxide while reducing the reaction pressure. In this case, however, it is necessary to excessively use steam and carbon dioxide in order to reduce the partial pressures of the carbon-containing organic compound and CO, so that several disadvantages are caused. For example, consumption of heat energy required for preheating steam and carbon dioxide increases. Further, costs for the separation of these gases from the product increase. Moreover, since a large reaction apparatus is required, the apparatus costs increase.
Objects of the present invention are: (To) provide a process for the production of a synthesis gas by reaction of a carbon-containing organic compound with steam and/or carbon dioxide, which process can solve a problem of carbon deposition; (and) to provide a process for the production of a synthesis gas ... in which a catalyst having suppressed carbon deposition activity is used.
The production of a synthesis gas according to the present invention may be performed by reacting a carbon-containing organic compound with steam and/or carbon dioxide (CO2) in the presence of the (described) catalyst.
As the carbon-containing organic compound, a lower hydrocarbon such as methane ... is preferred."
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Again, we are compelled to remind you:
The "methane" which, as above, can be reacted "with steam and/or carbon dioxide", and made thereby to form a gas mixture suitable "for the synthesis of ... methanol", can itself be synthesized, via the 1912 Nobel Prize-winning Sabatier process now being refined by NASA for use in making rocket fuel on the planet Mars, all as we have documented, from Carbon Dioxide.
In other words, starting with only Water and Carbon Dioxide, we can - as confirmed herein by one branch, the Patent Office, of our US Government, and with extrapolation to the Sabatier process - manufacture, as specified above, Methanol.
Methanol, we must further remind you, valuable as it is in and of itself, can be further transformed, via, for one example, ExxonMobil's "MTG"(r) technology, into Gasoline.
And, again, we can get there by starting with only Water and Carbon Dioxide.