UK Converts CO2 to Jet Fuel

 
We submit herein yet another proposal from the United Kingdom, defining a method wherein our Carbon Dioxide resource, generated in part as a by-product of our coal-use industries, can be recycled, using environmental energy to help drive the process, and converted into more liquid fuel.
 
As follows, with comment appended:
 
"Carbon-neutral jet-fuel re-synthesized from sequestrated CO2
 
Authors: K. J. Winch;  P. N. Sharratt; R. Mann
 
Affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, University of Manchester, UK
 
Publication: International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, Vol. 1, Issue. 2, June 2008, pp 142-150

Conoco Patents Consol CoalTL Process

 

In a very recent dispatch, we reported on a United States coal-to-liquid conversion technology Patent that had been awarded to ARCO, concurrent with their involvement in the Federally-sponsored "COED" process coal conversion pilot plant in Princeton, New Jersey; operated under subcontract by FMC Corporation.
 
Brief specifics of that patent are: Synthetic crude oil from coal; 1970; Patent 3503867; Assignee: Atlantic Richfield.
 
As we have also been reporting, Consol researchers were, separately, near the end of the FMC COED project, working on their own coal liquefaction technology, the Zinc Chloride, or  Zinc Halide, Coal Liquefaction Process, also with US Government support, under USDOE Contract EX-76-C-01-1743.

Oklahoma and Thailand Recycle CO2

 
Talk about your strange bedfellows.
 
Herein, they're Thailand's Chulalongkorn University and the USA's own University of Oklahoma. And, they're whispering something strange across the pillows: Carbon Dioxide can be recycled, with a low energy input, into the valuable liquid fuel, plastics manufacturing raw material and gasoline precursor, Methanol.
 
Let's listen in: 

"Carbon Dioxide and Steam Reforming with Methane in Low-Temperature Plasmas

K. Supat, S. Chavadej,  L. L. Lobban and  R. G. Mallinson
The Petroleum and Petrochemical College, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Institute for Gas Utilization Technologies and School of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019
Utilization of Greenhouse Gasses; Chapter 5, pp 83–99;ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 852; June 2003
Copyright 2003 American Chemical Society
 
Abstract

The combination of carbon dioxide reforming and steam reforming with methane is investigated in a corona discharge reactor with moderate power consumption. The plasma is used to overcome the energy barrier of these two endothermic reactions instead of high temperature catalytic processes. Simultaneous carbon dioxide and steam reforming produces higher methane conversions and CO/C2 ratios than only steam reforming or carbon dioxide reforming. The H2/CO ratio of 1.9:1 is close to that desired for Fischer Tropsch or methanol synthesis was achieved at a CO2/CH4 ratio of 1:1 with 50% water-vapor in the feed stream In this condition, the energy consumption is about 12 eV/molecule of carbon converted. Using electricity to drive the reaction at low temperature is counter-balanced by lower costs and simpler operation."

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We probably shouldn't repeat the naughty bits, like the words Fischer and Tropsch, in case Big Oil's listening in and his tender sensibilities might be offended.

But, nuts to him.

These whispers between collaborating international scientists need to be recorded and played over every radio station in US Coal Country.

In case you didn't get it: "carbon dioxide and steam reforming" of methane - which can itself be synthesized, via Sabatier technology, from CO2, or, via gasification techniques, from Coal - produces a raw material with properties "close to that desired for Fischer Tropsch or methanol synthesis".

Presuming you to by now know that we can make diesel and gasoline fuels with Fischer-Tropsch technology, and convert Methanol into Gasoline with ExxonMobil technology, herein it's documented that we can start those processes using Carbon Dioxide as a raw material, and using "electricity", let's just say generated -  for the sake of argument - economically by Coal, "to drive the reaction at low temperature" with "lower costs and simpler operation."  

That's some pretty sweet pillow talk, ain't it? How come nobody wants to hear it?

ARCO & FMC Refine CoalTL Courtesy of US Gov

  
Three links, one above and the others following, are enclosed in this dispatch, and the files two of those links will lead you to are attached as separate documents.
 
They reveal more, and we think more interesting, information concerning the US Government-sponsored development of "COED" coal liquefaction technology, by FMC Corporation, about which we have lately been reporting.
 
Note, once again, the involvement of ARCO in this Government-sponsored project to make oil from coal.
 
ARCO, much like Conoco's absorption of Consol, and all of Consol's CoalTL expertise, developed with US Government support, have found, as you will see, a way to keep their petroleum safe from coal liquids.

Korea Improves CO2 Recycling

 
We present, following, only the briefest of excerpts from this report of Korean research into the recycling of Carbon Dioxide.
 
The full document, attached and also accessible via the above link, is technically dense and, like much of what we have discovered, beyond our limited ability to adequately simplify and fully explain.
 
The conclusion which can be drawn, though, should be clear to everyone, as it is clear to us: Technologies do exist which - like the very concrete, practical and well-established processes for converting our abundant coal into liquid fuels - would enable us to reclaim, recycle and make profitable use of coal's most misunderstood by-product, Carbon Dioxide, in order to help us achieve domestic liquid fuel self-sufficiency.