United States Patent: 4189371

We've presented many reports concerning what has turned out to be the absolutely vast array pf Coal, and other Carbon resource, conversion technologies developed by the precedent and consequent corporate embodiments of what was once the symbolic exemplar of American Big Oil: Exxon.

And, perhaps too harshly, we've often criticized, and implied nefarious intent behind, the fact that Exxon obviously invested a great deal of money, over the course of multiple decades, on the development of advanced Carbon utilization technologies, but has spent no money at all either on educating the United States general public about their rather astonishing achievements in Coal and Carbon conversion science, or, on reducing those technical achievements to a commercial practice that would be of immense benefit to the United States domestic economy.

United States Patent: 7959829

As now accessible on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site via the link:

Texaco 1951 Coal + CO2 + H2O + O2 = Syngas | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 2,558,746 - Carbon Monoxide and Other Gases from Carbonaceous Materials; 1951; The Texas Company, NYC; Abstract: This invention relates to a process and apparatus for the generation of gases comprising carbon monoxide from carbonaceous materials. In one of its more specific aspects it relates to a process and apparatus for the generation of a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, suitable as a feed for the synthesis of hydrocarbons, from powdered coal. An object of this invention is to provide a process for the generation of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (and) to provide a process particularly suited to the generation of a feed gas for the synthesis of hydrocarbons from coal (in which) carbon dioxide ... reacts with the carbon to produce carbon monoxide (and, wherein steam) also reacts with heated carbon to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen";

Biodiesel Magazine | biodieselmagazine.com

Somewhat encouragingly, and, as well, indirectly, somewhat discouragingly, a flagship publication of the clean, green biofuels lobby is openly reporting on a topic, actually two topics, two facts, that hardly ever, if ever, see the light of day in the US Coal Country public press, which are:

Coal can, cleanly and efficiently, be converted into liquid hydrocarbon replacements for anything we now extract and derive from increasingly dear - in terms of: our money, our environment, and the lives of our young people fighting OPEC nation wars - natural petroleum;

Combustion Byproducts Recycling Consortium - West Virginia Water Research Institute

In a recent dispatch concerning just some of the potential values that could be attained by starting to view the solid by-products of Coal combustion, most often lumped together under the label of "fly ash", now accessible via the link:

Iowa Mines Metals from Coal Ash for the USDOE | Research & Development;

and, which demonstrates that fly ash can actually be utilized almost as an "ore" from which we can extract certain valuable and needed metals; we included a link to a recent news article published by the West Virginia Coal Association, concerning: