United States Patent: 4204843

Herein is further confirmation of a fact which we have, from other sources, previously documented:

Treating Coal, prior to steam-gasification done to generate a fully-hydrogenated hydrocarbon synthesis gas, with certain alkali metal hydroxides, such as you might find in inexpensive drain cleaners, can improve the rate and efficiency of Coal's conversion into such hydrocarbon syngas.

Exxon figured that out for themselves, as confirmed herein by our United States Government, a shade more than three decades ago.

United States Patent: 3976442

As now available via: More Oklahoma CO2 + Coal = Hydrocarbon Syngas | Research & Development | News; we earlier sent you information concerning: "US Patent 4.040,976 - Process of Treating Carbonaceous Material with Carbon Dioxide; August, 1977", wherein Oklahoma's Cities Service Company, aka "Citgo", disclosed their technology for reacting a "mixture of carbon dioxide and ... coal" in order to generate "a gaseous effluent comprising carbon monoxide"; which, as the Disclosure specifies, is to be combined with Hydrogen to produce, in essence, a synthesis gas mixture suitable for catalytic condensation into liquid hydrocarbons.

Herein, we see that the venerable Texaco, subsequently absorbed into the Chevron conglomerate, had, one year earlier, received their own United States Patent for very similar technology, wherein Carbon Dioxide, if combined with hot Coal, can be utilized as a valuable raw material resource, the basis for producing a Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide gas mixture suited for, as noted above concerning the product gas of USP 4.040,976, the synthesis of more versatile, and more valuable, hydrocarbon fuels.

Process for producing gasoline and gas

Since we just recently sent you report of United States Patent: 4218388; Preparing Hydrocarbons from Gasification of Coal; 1980; Assignee: Shell Oil Company", wherein is disclosed how a "synthesis gas" derived from Coal and Steam "is converted" both "into gasoline" and, concurrently, into "light hydrocarbons (such as) butane or LPG"; we wanted to affirm that such multi-product Coal conversion processes have been around, have been known to our United States Government, and, thus, supposedly have been available to the US fuel supply industry, for many decades.

Herein, we see that such knowledge, which would enable us to convert our abundant Coal, through controlled reaction with Steam, into both a Synthetic, or Substitute, Natural Gas and Gasoline, in a fashion conceptually similar to Shell's technology, has been, or should have been, available for us to utilize since immediately prior to our involvement in WWII.

United States Patent: 4218388

Devised by scientists in the Netherlands, rights to the enclosed technology, wherein both high-octane Gasoline and Liquid Petroleum Gas can be synthesized, concurrently, from Coal, are owned by the Shell Oil Company, as headquartered in Texas.

Much of the full Disclosure is related to lengthy exposition concerning the minutiae of catalysis; and, the sheer volume of that technical verbiage might obscure for the casual reader what the technology is all about.