Every once in a while in the course of our research - - concerning the now-plain and incontrovertible facts, that, we can efficiently convert, by various means and methods, both our abundant domestic United States Coal and our, some say too-abundant, Carbon Dioxide natural resources into anything and everything we now squander our grandchildren's future prosperity, and our current US national security, to continue buying from our close friends, and enthusiastic boosters of democracy and the American way, in OPEC - - we trip over something that makes us go "Aha! It is the Grail!". (http://www.heroofcamelot.com/legend/holy-grail).
We've written many times about the 1912 Nobel Prize-winning Sabatier process, wherein Carbon Dioxide is converted directly into substitute natural gas Methane with, as the inventor of the technology, Paul Sabatier, put it in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "the greatest ease".
For more details, see our report of:
CO2 Solution Wins Nobel Prize - in 1912 | Research & Development | News.
The Sabatier process, as succinctly explained separately, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, and it's contractors, via:
Our United States Department of energy has recently improved a process that enables the direct conversion of Coal, in combination with an extremely wide variety of renewable, Carbon-recycling, waste and otherwise non-food Biomass, what the USDOE labels as "plant products that are normally considered waste materials", "into a useful liquid fuel", that is, into a "fuel product"; a synthetic petroleum, as we take it, a "pumpable liquid" that, as the USDOE herein specifies: "can be processed at conventional petroleum refineries".
As a bonus, yes, a bonus, the USDOE's Coal and Biomass liquefaction process co-generates "a high purity CO2 product", from the blended Coal and waste Biomass, along with the "liquid fuel" which "can be processed at conventional petroleum refineries".
http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1127075
Carbon Dioxide is starting to be seen, virtually around the world, as a valuable raw material resource from which, instead of petroleum-based raw materials, we can synthesize perhaps all, or nearly all, of the polymers and plastics that are so indispensable to all sectors of our modern economy.
That fact is clearly stated as a goal by no less a global titan of the international polymers industry than Bayer Corporation, as seen in our report of:
United States Patent Application: 0140131192
We were actually researching some improved methods for the conversion of Coal and Carbon-recycling botanical matter and wastes into synthetic petroleum today, when our US Government elected to publish the subject of this hastily-composed dispatch, i.e.: yet another formal description of technology developed, by Arizona State University, in an effort paid for with the taxes collected by our US Government from all of us, whereby freely-available environmental energy can be harnessed to power the conversion of Carbon Dioxide, as harvested from whatever handy source, into substitute natural gas Methane.