(WO/2010/088524) CONVERSION OF CARBON DIOXIDE TO ORGANIC PRODUCTS
As seen in: Princeton Recycles CO2 with US Government Support | Research & Development | News; we recently made report that Princeton University had applied for a United States Patent on a Carbon Dioxide recycling process developed by their scientists, Andrew Bocarsly and Emily Barton Cole.
Via disclosure of that invention, United States Patent Application: 0100187123 - "Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Organic Products", we learned that the United States Government, through Natural Science Foundation Grant No. CHE-0606475, had financed Princeton's development of a technology which, using Carbon Dioxide recovered from whatever source, could, "under very mild condition", and by using only "a minimum of energy", convert a water solution of CO2 into useful products such as "methanol, isopropanol, formic acid, formaldehyde, glyoxal or ethanol".
Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch, we see that Princeton and it's scientists have also applied for an international, or "World", patent on that technology.
Comment follows excerpts from that link to:
"WO/2010/088524 - Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Organic Products
Publication Date: August, 2010; International Filing Date: January, 2010
Applicants: Princeton University, NJ, US
Inventors: Andrew Bocarsly and Emily Barton Cole
Abstract: The invention relates to various embodiments of an environmentally beneficial method for reducing carbon dioxide.
The methods in accordance with the invention include electrochemically or photoelectrochemically reducing the carbon dioxide in a divided electrochemical cell that includes an anode, e.g., an inert metal counterelectrode, in one cell compartment and a metal or p-type semiconductor cathode electrode in another cell compartment that also contains an aqueous solution of an electrolyte and a catalyst of one or more substituted or unsubstituted aromatic amines to produce therein a reduced organic product.
(And, wherein that) product is methanol, isopropanol, formic acid, formaldehyde, glyoxal or ethanol."
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There seems little need, in light of our previous report, to duplicate any of the technicalities, as we presume anyone who truly has interest would have been motivated to examine them in our report concerning the domestic United States Patent Application: 0100187123.
As we detailed in that report, however, and in similar ones concerning the products which can be obtained through the chemical reduction of Carbon Dioxide, we are compelled to remind you that Methanol and Ethanol, serviceable liquid fuels as they are, can both be converted, through known and established processes, into Gasoline.
Formic acid has applications in fuel cells; and, as seen again via the link included in our earlier report:
ScienceDirect - Fuel : Extraction of Taiheiyo coal with supercritical water–HCOOH mixture;
"HCOOH", i.e., Formic Acid, can be used to good effect in the liquefaction of Coal.
And, as a real bonus, Formaldehyde can be converted into useful plastic urea-formaldehyde resins, wherein the Carbon Dioxide consumed in it's synthesis would be forever sequestered, along with the CO2 consumed, through a common industrial process, in the synthesis of the needed urea.
Once more and again:
Carbon Dioxide, as it arises in a very 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, according to, as herein, Princeton University, reclaim that CO2, and then economically convert it into liquid hydrocarbon fuels and plastics manufacturing raw materials.
In closing, we must ask:
Are economic exploitations of US Coal Country, like Cap & Trade taxation and mandated Geologic Sequestration in leaky old oil wells, still on the table; and, are they still considered to be viable options by any of our elected representatives?