United States Patent: 4169128

Actually, the California rocket scientists in our headline are both gasifying and liquefying Coal through direct, controlled reactions of Coal with elemental Hydrogen.

We know that the use of elemental, molecular Hydrogen sounds expensive, and likely is.

But, as we recently reported in:

Standard Oil Converts Coal with Methane and Hydrogen | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 4,326,944 - Rapid Hydropyrolysis of Carbonaceous Solids; 1982; Assignee: Standard Oil Company of Indiana; Abstract: A method is disclosed for recovering liquids and gases by a rapid hydropyrolysis of carbonaceous solids";

Plant Would Let Algae Turn Carbon Dioxide to Fuel - NYTimes.com

We actually sent the initial link in this dispatch to you more than two and a half years ago, in a report now accessible on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site, via the link:

Plant Would Let Algae Turn Carbon Dioxide to Fuel | Research & Development.

But, herein, since Dow Chemical, of Michigan, is a company whose name should be familiar to everyone who's managed to climb down off the mountain in the last fifty years or so, we wanted to readdress the same topic; especially since there have been some further developments in this Carbon Dioxide recycling endeavor, as we document with additional links and excerpts, following some expanded "refreshers" excerpted from that original article, as follows:

United States Patent: 6533848

We've made previous reports on the use of Coal Ash both as a property-enhancing and cost-reducing inorganic "filler" for some types of plastic, as seen in:

Carbon Dioxide + Coal Fly Ash = Synthetic Lumber | Research & Development; concerning, in part: "United States Patent Application 20080029925 - Filled Polymer Composite and Synthetic Building Material; 2008; Abstract: The invention relates to composite compositions having a matrix of polymer networks and dispersed phases of particulate or fibrous materials. The matrix is filled with a particulate phase, which can be selected from one or more of a variety of components, such as fly ash particles";

United States Patent: 4326944

As we read the available literature - and, by now, it should be obvious that there is a lot of it - concerning the conversion of our abundant Coal into direct replacements for scarce natural hydrocarbons, it's becoming clear that most technologies for the conversion of Coal into hydrocarbons have been devised to "finesse", for want of a better term, the transfer of Hydrogen to Coal, and the bonding of the Hydrogen with the Carbon, to form hydrocarbons.

For just one, out of now many, many examples, we refer you to our report of: