USA Makes Gasoline from CO2 and Water

United States Patent: 4197421
 
We have previously reported on the carbon conversion work of Meyer Steinberg, at the USDOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in upstate New York.
 
Herein, we see that, thirty years ago, our United States Government assigned itself the rights to a US Patent it awarded to Steinberg, for technology that enables the conversion of Carbon Dioxide, as reclaimed from the atmosphere, into Methane, Methanol and Gasoline.
 

Big Oil Hydrogen for Coal Liquefaction

United States Patent: 3726966
 
We have been documenting that considerable effort has been put into the development of technologies for economically generating Hydrogen, so that it could be employed to hydrogenate the primarily carbonaceous liquids derived from Coal, and thus convert those Coal liquids into hydrocarbons more compatible with our current transportation fleet's liquid fuel refining and delivery infrastructure.
 
Now posted on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site, for instance, are reports of two United States Patents issued to Consolidation Coal Company, "USP 3188179 - Hydrogen from Hydrocarbon Gas and Steam" and "USP 3115394 - Process for the Production of Hydrogen", wherein they disclose technologies  developed specifically to generate Hydrogen for the purposes of Coal liquefaction.

Union Carbide Improves CoalTL for US Guv

United States Patent: 4663355
 
As you should, from our posts, by now know, the old Union Carbide Corporation, now a component of Dow Chemical, operated, for a time, several decades ago, a Coal hydrogenation plant that made liquid hydrocarbons from Coal, in South Charleston, West Virginia.
 
Again, we have documented both that Coal conversion facility's existence and multiple patented Coal conversion technical innovations that were inspired by it's operation.
 
Herein is another of those patented technical innovations, but one which reveals a new, but now unsurprising, piece of information.
 

Gulf Oil's Self-Powered Coal Liquefaction

United States Patent: 4227991

Pittsburgh's old Gulf Oil, long since absorbed into the Chevron collective, had, as we've been documenting, devoted themselves, along with their Pittsburg, Kansas, P&M Mining subsidiary, to developing an extensive and impressive array of Coal conversion technologies, that, had they ever seen the light of day, would have enabled the energy-efficient conversion of Coal into a range of liquid and gaseous fuels and chemicals.
 
Herein we present an interesting, and very complicated, example of the Coal conversion technologies this Coal Country petroleum company managed to develop before being assimilated into Big Oil.
 
The full patent disclosure, as available through the link, is lengthy and very complicated, and beyond our ability to reduce into a full and truly comprehensive synopsis.
 

Korea Awarded US CO2 Recycling Patent

United States Patent: 6376562
 
In a very recent dispatch, we alerted you that scientists in Korea had been awarded a United States Patent for technology that enables the conversion, the recycling, of Carbon Dioxide into valuable hydrocarbons.
 
Herein is that patent, with comment appended following excerpts from the enclosed link:
 
"United States Patent 6,376,562 - Hydrocarbon Synthesis via Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide