Chevron Uses CO2 to Recycle Carbon

United States Patent: 3850588

 

In confirmation of one or two earlier reports we've made, and of references we've cited, we see herein, via the enclosed US Patent, that reclaimed Carbon Dioxide can be productively consumed and utilized, through reactions with waste organic materials, in the synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels.

Chevron, the corporate owner of the patent rights, summarizes the wastes which can be reacted with Carbon Dioxide in the following passage we've excerpted, as a foreword, from the body of the full Disclosure:

Switzerland Hydrogasifies Coal with Solar Power

United States Patent: 4149856

 

In two recent reports, which are now available on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site as:

USDOE Hydrogasifies Coal with Solar Power | Research & Development | News;

and:

NASA Hydrogasifies Coal with Solar Power | Research & Development | News;

we documented how both NASA and the USDOE had each developed very similar technologies, both now almost three decades old, which enable the use of solar energy for, as each put it, respectively: "gasifying carbonaceous material" and "heating a piece of carbon ... with steam (and) thereby enabling formation of the gaseous fuel".

USDOE Converts CO2 to Gasoline

United States Patent: 4197421

In an earlier report, now available as: USDOE Converts CO2 to Liquid Fuel | Research & Development | News; we documented: United States Patent: 3959094 - Synthesis of Methanol from Carbon Dioxide; 1976;

Inventor: Meyer Steinberg; Assignee: The United States of America; wherein USDOE Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist Steinberg reveals a process wherein, as the Patent's title indicates, reclaimed Carbon Dioxide can be converted into the liquid fuel and plastics manufacturing raw material, Methanol.

CO2 Improves 1941 Coal Conversion

Liquid process for manufacture of motor fuel

 

You have to read very closely to discern the facts, but:

All of the by-product Carbon Dioxide generated by the Coal conversion process herein described is recycled back into the synthesis gas generator, to be reacted with more hot Coal and Steam, and with other products of the process, to be thereby converted, in such combined reactions with Coal and Steam, into additional Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide - the components of hydrocarbon synthesis gas from which liquid hydrocarbons are catalytically condensed.

Further, close examination of the schematics reveals some important facts about those combined reactions:

WV Union Carbide Purifies Coal Syngas

United States Patent: 4740361

 

We have several times documented and referred to the operation of, decades ago, a Coal hydrogenation and conversion facility in South Charleston, WV, by the old Union Carbide Corporation, which has since been assimilated by Dow Chemical.

Herein, we see that one of Union Carbide's West Virginia scientists, in collaboration with others, developed a method which enables the further cleaning and refining of a hydrocarbon synthesis gas which, as they reveal, "can be produced by the partial oxidation or steam-reforming ... and  ... gasification of coal".