Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #7854
As we've documented, and tried to explain, in many of our previous reports, the key to converting Coal and Carbon Dioxide into - more versatile and more desired - Hydrocarbons lies in combining the Carbon content of CO2 and Coal in some way with Hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a common element, of course, as the chemical formula for plain old Water, i.e., "H2O", attests.
We enclose in this dispatch report of an intriguing use for Sulfur Dioxide, SO2, which can be scrubbed, in greater or lesser quantities, depending on the grade of Coal used, from the exhaust gases of some Coal-fired power plants.
Maybe we don't like to talk about the supposed pollutants arising from our productive and essential uses of Coal, but, when, as in the case of CO2, and the technologies related to it's productive recycling, as seen in:
We'll be bouncing around a bit in this dispatch, and are including a number of links and excerpts. And, we'll hopefully have it organized in such a way that it won't be too confusing.
First, we've reported and documented many times that Coal can be gasified with Steam, i.e., H2O, and, be made thereby to yield a blend of Carbon Monoxide and elemental, molecular Hydrogen, H2; a combination of gases commonly known as "synthesis gas", or "syngas", which can be subsequently reacted together, through the action of a catalyst, and be made thereby to form a variety of gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons.
Energy Citations Database (ECD) - Sponsored by OSTI
In a number of our previous reports, we've documented the Carbon Dioxide recycling achievements of several highly-accomplished scientists: Carol Kreutz, Etsuko Fujita and Meyer Steinberg, all of whom worked in our taxes-paid employ at our own United States Department of Energy's Brookhaven, NY, National Laboratory.
Continuous process for effecting catalytic reactions
Most of us who grew up in West Virginia, and other Coal-mining states, in the 1950's and 1960's, at one time or another became acquainted with the old, traditional Coal miner's "cap lamp": an ingenious little affair that trickled Water into a closed reservoir of Calcium Carbide, thereby generating Acetylene gas that was directed through a nozzle in the center of a polished metal reflector, where it was ignited with a flint spark wheel similar to that on the old Zippo lighter you used to fire up the L&M's you pilfered from your Dad.