Shell Oil Improves Coal-to-Methanol Efficiency with CO2

United States Patent Application: 0090126259

We've documented many times, that, through an initial process of gasification, followed by catalyst-promoted chemical condensation, Coal can be converted into the valuable alcohol, Methanol.

Such an operation is, in fact, being conducted on a profitable commercial basis by Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee; again as we have documented, for just one example, in:

Coal to Methanol - Eastman & Air Products | Research & Development; which concerns Eastman's: "Commercial-Scale Demonstration of a Liquid-Phase Methanol Process; Abstract: The Eastman Chemical Company operates a coal gasification complex in Kingsport. Tennessee. The primary output of this plant is carbonylation-derived acetic anhydride. The required methyl acetate is made from methanol and acetic acid. Methanol is currently produced from syngas ... . (Syngas made from Coal.) An Air Products/Eastman joint venture, with partial funding from the Department of Energy under the Clean Coal Technology Program, has been formed to build a demonstration-scale liquid-phase methanol plant ... . In an array of integrated plants, coal is gasified and the resulting synthesis gas purified to a high degree. This gas, which consists chiefly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is used to feed the chemical plants. Methanol is produced in one plant by the Lurgi low-pressure gas-phase process".

Georgia Tech Recycles Coal Utilization Byproducts

United States Patent: 8057594

As we earlier reported, and as now accessible on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site via:

Leftover Gets a Makeover: Professor Develops a New Use for Coal Ash | Research & Development; wherein we learn that:

"An assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Professor Mulalo Doyoyo, has developed a new structural material based on (the) leftovers from coal burning. Known as Cenocell, the material offers attributes that include high strength and light weight – without the use of cement, an essential ingredient of conventional concrete";

Utah 2011 CO2 + H2O = Hydrocarbon Syngas

United States Patent: 8075746

A number of times during the course of our reportage over the last several years, we've documented for you the development of a technology that has been labeled by some as "syntrolysis", that is, the co-electrolysis of Steam, H2O, and Carbon Dioxide, CO2, with the breakdown of those compounds into their simpler elemental and molecular constituents; most significantly Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide, which can then serve as the components of a synthesis gas and be catalytically condensed, as via the venerable, almost generic, Fischer-Tropsch process, into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons.

Exxon Improves Coal Conversion Energy Efficiency

United States Patent: 4284416

As further evidence of just how efficient and sophisticated the technology for converting our abundant Coal into more versatile liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons had, some several decades ago, among the closed circle of Big Oil, and US Government initiates, become, we recently submitted information concerning an improvement on Coal conversion technology, an improvement financed, through our US Government, by our tax dollars, that related to the recovery, and reuse, of metal catalysts from the residues of Coal conversion.

Coal Fly Ash Makes Concrete "Green"

http://www.flyash.info/2011/032-Dunstan-2011.pdf

In an earlier report, now accessible on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site via the link:

US Government Coal Ash Cement Stronger than Portland Cement | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 4,256,504 - Fly Ash-based Cement; 1981; Inventor: Edwin Dunstan, Jr.; Assignee: The United States of America (as represented by the Secretary of the Interior); Abstract: A cement composition comprising a high calcium-content fly ash and calcium sulfate, and mortar and concrete compositions containing the cement;