Texas Recycles CO2

  
We have reported on, and made frequent reference to, "bi-reforming" and "tri-reforming" technologies, wherein Carbon Dioxide is reacted with Methane to synthesize higher, liquid hydrocarbons, such as Methanol.
 
We have also thoroughly documented, and will further report, that the needed Methane can itself be synthesized, either from Carbon Dioxide, via the century-old Sabatier process now being more fully developed by NASA, and by various corporate contractors in service to the USDOD; or, from Coal, using processes of Steam, or "hydro", gasification.
 
We have suggested, with the resultant taking of offense in some quarters, that the legislative "push" to capture the Carbon Dioxide arising from our smokestacks and then ship it to West Texas for "sequestration" in leaky old oil fields, all at the expense of our vital Coal-use industries and their customers, was a veiled attempt to, simply, swipe a valuable raw material resource from us Coal mining rubes resident in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the rest of US Coal Country.
 

1959 Coal & Steam to Hydrocarbo Syngas

 
The title of this half-century-old US Patent, "Production of Carbon Monoxide", is, we must contend, like many others we have brought to your attention, deliberately misleading.
 
The Patent reveals, instead, without question, a technology wherein both Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen, an hydrocarbon synthesis gas, in other words, can be efficiently generated by reacting Coal with Steam.
 
Moreover, even the full Disclosure is, in some respects, we again contend deliberately, misleading, since it frequently refers to Oxygen and Oxygen-containing gases, which, though needed, are not the keys of  this technology.

Exxon 1974 Coal to Methane

 
In an earlier dispatch, we made report of the 1973 US Patent 3,740,193, "Hydrogen Production by Catalytic Steam Gasification of Carbonaceous Materials".
 
In that patent, Esso, before they were officially Exxon, explained how we could get all the Hydrogen we needed for both, as they stated specifically, "the refining of petroleum and for the production of synthetic fuels" by the Steam gasification of, among other things, Coal.
 
In this report, we further document Exxon's intensive development of related processes for obtaining the Hydrogen needed to hydrogenate and liquefy Coal, as one integrated function of a complete Coal conversion process, from reactions between Coal and Steam.

USDOE Sponsors Penn State CO2 Recycling

  
We have many times reported on, and made reference to, the "Tri-reforming" technology developed by Penn State University, wherein reclaimed flue-gas Carbon Dioxide is reacted with Methane to synthesize higher, and commercially valuable, hydrocarbons.
 
We have, of course, documented, and will further document, that the needed Methane can be synthesized, via the 1912 Nobel-winning Sabatier process, from Carbon Dioxide; or, via processes of Steam gasification, from Coal. 
 
What we just recently discovered, however, is that the development of Penn State's technology for the recycling of Carbon Dioxide was paid for, at least in part, by us.

California Recycles Carbon via Coal Gasification

  
Wednesday, we sent you more confirmation that Carbon Dioxide could be recycled into hydrocarbons, when added to a process of indirect Coal conversion, wherein Coal is gasified with Steam to more efficiently generate an hydrogenated synthesis gas, in our report of "United States Patent 4,162,959 - Production of Hydrogenated Hydrocarbons", which was assigned, in 1979, to California's Occidental Petroleum.
 
Herein, we see that Occidental Petroleum had, prior to that invention, actually been at work for some time on the development of Coal, and Carbon, conversion technologies.