Especially in light of some recent news, as in:
Rockefeller Introduces Legislation to Suspend EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulation | Latest | News; wherein we learn that the "U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources would be suspended for two years by a bill introduced Jan. 31 by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and colleagues";
we wanted to again confirm and document that Carbon Dioxide, as it arises in a small way, relative to natural sources of emission, such as volcanoes, from our varied and productive uses of Coal, is a valuable raw material resource.
We can, as confirmed herein again by at least one USDOE scientist, reclaim Carbon Dioxide and convert it into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
We have already, many times, cited some of our USDOE scientists working at our Brookhaven, NY, National Laboratory, relative to the genuine potentials for recycling Carbon Dioxide in the synthesis of valuable, and needed, hydrocarbon compounds.
Meyer Steinberg, you will recall, is one of the prominent scientists there who has provided what we perceive to be valuable insights into CO2 recycling technology.
Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch, we see that other Brookhaven researchers, as well, have developed technologies wherein Carbon Dioxide can be efficiently converted into hydrocarbons.
Comment, concerning further implications of the disclosed technology, and some facts of other, perhaps interesting, substance, follows excerpts from:
"United States Patent 6,921,733 - Low Temperature Method for Production of Methanol
Date: July, 2005
Inventor: Devinder Mahajan, NY
Assignee: Brookhaven Science Associates, Upton, NY
Abstract: The invention provides a homogenous catalyst for the production of methanol from purified synthesis gas at low temperature and low pressure ... .
This invention was made with Government support under contract number DE-AC02-98CH10886, awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Government has certain rights in the invention.
Claims:
A homogeneous catalyst ... dissolved in a methanol solvent system ... capable of producing methanol from synthesis gas (and) wherein said synthesis gas comprises CO and H2.
(And) wherein said catalyst is capable of producing methanol from synthesis gas at a temperature of about room temperature to about 150C. and at a pressure of about 1500 to about 70 psig.
(And) wherein said catalyst is capable of producing methanol from synthesis gas in a period of time of about one minute to about thirty minutes.
(And) wherein said synthesis gas further comprises CO2.
(And, a) co-catalyst selected from the group consisting of Cr, Mo, W, Co, Ni, Fe, Ru, Rh, Pd, Pt and mixtures thereof (and) further comprising a support therefor (and) wherein said support is selected from the group consisting of zeolites, clays, acidic zeolites, alumina, silica and mixtures thereof.
(Note the use of Zeolite mineral-based catalysts, in a way similar to ExxonMobil's "MTG"(r), methanol-to-gasoline, technology, wherein Methanol, as herein, can be made from a "synthesis gas" that, at least in part, "comprises CO2".)
Field: This invention relates to homogenous catalyst formulations for methanol production from synthesis gas and methods of producing methanol by using the catalyst formulations of the invention.
Object and Summary: It is ... an object of the present invention to provide catalyst formulations that operate at low temperatures and pressures and are non-toxic (and which) can be used to produce methanol from synthesis gas containing CO2 ... .
The present invention ... provides a homogenous catalyst for the production of methanol from purified synthesis gas at low temperature and pressures ... (And, the) synthesis gas can include CO2 ... .
Whenever the synthesis gas comprises carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and/or hydrogen it is preferable that in the method of the invention the homogenous catalyst also includes a co-catalyst metal which is selected from the metals of the groups consisting of Group 6, Group 7, Group 8, Group 9 and mixtures thereof."
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Without directly citing earlier of our reports, we can make any needed "carbon monoxide", as above, in the first place, by blowing Carbon Dioxide through red-hot Coal.
And, we can efficiently generate Hydrogen by the Solar-driven electrolysis and photolysis of Water.
All as we have documented; and, as we will further document.
We suppose that we can collect all of the CO2 we might need - both to convert, through reactions with hot Coal, into Carbon Monoxide, CO; and, then, more CO2 to react with that CO, along with H2, to make Methanol, as in this USDOE-developed process - from any number of convenient sources in United States Coal Country.
The big question is why we're not even talking about doing so.
And, some final notes:
As we have earlier reported, the USDOE, in it's wisdom, has farmed out management of our vital US National Laboratories, including Brookhaven, to corporate entities composed of various private and public corporations and institutions.
Those independent, non-governmental management entities, as herein, are assigned the rights to patented processes invented by Government-employed scientists, whose salaries are paid with our tax money and who do their work at expensive, high-tech facilities our tax money bought, paid for and maintain.
At the Brookhaven Lab, management is contracted out to the named assignee of the CO2-recycling invention documented herein: "Brookhaven Science Associates".
Information concerning them is available via: Brookhaven Science Associates; wherein we learn that they were "established for the sole purpose of managing and operating Brookhaven National Laboratory"
Among those "Associates" is an entity whose name might ring vaguely familiar: Battelle Memorial Institute.
Without herein delving into the seeming skunk works nature of Battelle's identity, we note that we will, in a dispatch to follow in coming days, document how Battelle, on their own, have been developing Carbon Dioxide recycling technology, subsequent, and in some respects similar, to that disclosed in USP 6,921,733 by our employee, USDOE scientist Devinder Mahajan.