Monsanto Patents CO2 Recycling | Research & Development | News
Back in December of 2009, we made report, as linked above, that the Monsanto Chemical Company, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, had developed a technology which enabled the conversion of Carbon Dioxide, reclaimed from whatever source, into valuable "Urethane" plastics.
Monsanto might be a name familiar to some older Ohio Valley hands, since they were once the co-owners of the now wholly-owned Bayer Corporation, formerly "Mobay", chemical plant, north of New Martinsville, WV; where, coincidentally, urethanes are, or once were, among the major product lines manufactured.
As we have noted in other, unrelated, dispatches, our personal insufficiencies, combined, perhaps, with glitches at the US Government's Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO, web site, occasionally prevent us from providing you with links directly to the original USPTO source.
That was the case in our original dispatch concerning Monsanto, and we wanted, herein, both to attempt correction of that flaw and to provide you with a little more information, not only about Monsanto's technology for making a valuable basic plastic material - used in the further manufacture of various high-performance plastics and coatings - out of reclaimed Carbon Dioxide; but, about another process Monsanto developed, wherein the valuable liquid fuel, Methanol, can, as well, be synthesized from Carbon Dioxide.
An additional link follows the following link to, and very brief excerpts from, the official USPTO record of:
"United States Patent: 5371183 - Preparation of Urethane from Polyamine and Carbon Dioxide
Date: December, 1994
Inventors: William McGhee and Dennis Riley, MO
Assignee: Monsanto Company, St. Louis
Abstract: The present invention provides a process for preparing urethanes and carbonates from an amine or an alcohol, carbon dioxide and a hydrocarbyl halide. The amine or alcohol is reacted with carbon dioxide in a suitable solvent system and in the presence of an amidine or guanidine base, to form the ammonium carbamate or carbonate salt which is then reacted in a polar aprotic solvent with a hydrocarbyl halide. Polymer products can also be prepared utilizing this process or utilizing the resulting urethanes and carbonates under standard polymerization conditions."
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Note that quite useful carbonate-type plastics can also be generated, along with the urethanes, from CO2.
Interestingly, however, that development came nearly one and a half decades after Monsanto had, in confirmation of now many of our prior reports, which document similar achievements by other credible sources, demonstrated that the nearly-precious liquid fuel, Methanol, could be synthesized by starting with, as one primary raw material, Carbon Dioxide.
Comment follows the link to, and excerpts from:
"United States Patent: 4181675 - Process for Methanol Production
Date: January, 1980
Inventors: Earle Makin and Keith Okamoto, Texas
Assignee: Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO
Abstract: An improved methanol synthesis process is provided wherein synthesis gas containing hydrogen and carbon dioxide is passed over a methanol synthesis catalyst ...
Claims: (A) methanol synthesis process wherein methanol is synthesized from a synthesis gas comprising hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
We have now found that a methanol synthesis process utilizing semi-permeable hollow fiber membranes for the recovery of significant amounts of the synthesis gas values present in a purge gas stream provides an improved synthesis process with significantly increased yield of methanol product.
According to the invention there is provided a methanol production process in which synthesis gas comprising hydrogen and carbon dioxide is passed over a methanol synthesis catalyst, cooled to condense and remove methanol and water contained in a gas mixture, a portion of uncondensed gases are removed as purge and passed into contact with the outer surfaces of a plurality of semi-permeable hollow fiber membranes selectively permeable to hydrogen and carbon dioxide and the permeated gas concentrated in hydrogen and carbon dioxide is combined with a synthesis gas mixture for contact with the methanol synthesis catalyst."
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We must note that, in the full Disclosure, Monsanto posits that the Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide be deliberately made by processing natural gas. They claim that industrial exhaust gas sources of CO2 are too contaminated with other products of combustion to be utilized.
They don't explain, though, how "a plurality of semi-permeable hollow fiber membranes selectively permeable to hydrogen and carbon dioxide" can be used to separate H2 and CO2 from the exhaust gasses of their own invention, but not from the exhaust gasses of any other industrial process.
Such seeming contradiction aside, we note, as in a few earlier reports - with others similar to follow - which are accessible via:
CO2 Air Capture Practical - U of Colorado | Research & Development | News; "An idealized assessment of the economics of air capture of carbon dioxide in mitigation policy; 2009; University of Colorado; Abstract: This paper discusses the technology of direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere called air capture. It develops ... an analysis of the average costs of air capture over the 21st century under the assumption that technologies available today are used to fully offset net human emissions of carbon dioxide. The simple assessment finds that even at a relatively high cost per ton of carbon, the costs of air capture are directly comparable to the costs of stabilization using other means"; and, as in:
Capture of CO2 from Ambient Air | Research & Development | News; wherein is detailed: "Capture of CO2 from Ambient Air; Klaus Lackner, Columbia University; Abstract: (A) technology for capturing CO2 directly from ambient air (air capture) at collection rates that far exceed those of trees or other photosynthesizing organisms and at costs that would allow the widespread use of air capture in managing the anthropogenic carbon cycle and combating climate change"; that:
it is possible, even practical, to, using environmentally-derived energy, capture uncontaminated and clean Carbon Dioxide directly from the atmosphere itself.
Further, as in, for one example, our earlier report:
Solar-Powered Hydrogen Generation | Research & Development | News; wherein is detailed "United States Patent 7726127 - Solar Power for Thermochemical Production of Hydrogen; 2010; Assignee: Pratt & Whitney, CA; Abstract: A solar-powered hydrogen production system includes a thermochemical system and solar heating system. The thermochemical system produces hydrogen";
it is also possible and practical to, again utilizing environmentally-derived energy, split Water into it's atomic components and thus generate the Hydrogen required, by the process of United States Patent: 4181675; to be reacted with Carbon Dioxide in the production of valuable Methanol.
Methanol, we must remind you, can, via, for one instance, ExxonMobil's "MTG"(r) technology, be further converted, on a practical and commercial basis, into Gasoline. Or, it can be used as one raw material in the manufacture of a variety of valuable, high-performance engineering plastics, where the Carbon Dioxide consumed in its synthesis via, for example, Monsanto's process of United States Patent: 4181675, would be forever, and productively, "sequestered".