United States Patent: 7012104

Herein, from the one-time parent company, before some complicated disvestitures, of our own, local Consolidation Coal Company, we present information concerning improvements made in catalysts intended to assist in the conversion of Coal into liquid hydrocarbons.

It is all a refinement of the venerable Fischer-Tropsch process, which, via generation of synthesis gas and subsequent catalysis, converts Coal into those liquid hydrocarbons.

However, good ole' ConocoPhillips, as in a number of similar carbon conversion technologies invented by members of the Big Oil club, manages to avoid entirely any use of the dirty, four-letter word, "Coal"; insisting, without variance, that the needed "synthesis gas" can be obtained by processing Methane, or "natural gas".

Which ain't too bad, really, since we've known since award of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to Paul Sabatier, that we can make Methane from Carbon Dioxide.

United States Patent: 4134822

We have, in a few earlier reports, documented some of the achievements of the University of Utah in the development of Coal conversion technology.

Examples include:

Utah Makes Gasoline from Coal | Research & Development | News; wherein is detailed: "Production of Gasoline Components (from) Coal-derived Aromatic Hydrocarbons; University of Utah"; and:

Utah CoalTL Synergies | Research & Development | News; wherein multiple cited reports testify that University of Utah scientists have developed processes that enable the co-liquefaction of Coal with a variety of what would otherwise be environmentally-contaminating carbonaceous waste materials.

United States Patent Application: 0100205856

In our recently-published report, posted as:

USDOE Recycles CO2 to Methanol with Solar Power | Research & Development | News; which concerns, primarily,United States Patent: 6066187 - "Solar Reduction of CO2", we not only made reference to additional, directly-related USDOE Carbon Dioxide technologies under development; but, as well, included an additional link,http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf; again documenting the USDOE's separate, but conceptually-related, development of their "Green Freedom"(TM) CO2-recycling technology, developed by other USDOE scientists at our Los Alamos, New Mexico, National Laboratory.

Herein, via the initial link in this dispatch, and following excerpts, we see that the Los Alamos scientists have applied for their own United States Patent, disclosing  what we must presume to be the underlying technology for "Green Freedom"(TM).

United States Patent: 4686313

We know that we've beaten the ExxonMobil "MTG"(r), methanol-to-gasoline technology, nearly to death.

In that process, as we're certain you will by now recall, Coal is first converted into Methanol; and, the Methanol is then converted into Gasoline.

Like some other Coal conversion technologies, arising from other sources, we have documented for you, zeolite minerals, - - synthetic versions of which, interestingly, and again as we've earlier documented, can be harvested in abundance from Coal-fired power plant fly ash - - most especially one designated as "ZSM-5", are specified as catalysts which facilitate, in ExxonMobil's technology, the condensation of Methanol from synthesis gas made from Coal, and, as we understand it, the subsequent transformation of that Methanol into Gasoline.

We further remind you that Exxon's process is not the only one which enables the production of Methanol from Coal. We have many time documented the fact that Eastman Chemical Company is, and has for some years been doing, just that at their plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. And, there are other, international, examples of the process in use, as well.