United States Patent Application: 0070274891

In the course of our many reports concerning the indirect conversion of Coal into more versatile hydrocarbons, we have once or twice made note of the fact that either plain Air or purified Oxygen, with or without the addition of Steam, can be utilized in the gasification, the partial oxidation, of Coal; which leads to the generation of a synthesis gas that, through various and long-known catalytic processes, can be condensed into hydrocarbon liquids.

Using Air for that initial gasification is more economical than using Oxygen - with the expensive, and costly to operate, equipment that separating and compressing Oxygen from the atmosphere requires.

However, due especially to Air's high Nitrogen content, it's use in Coal gasification leads to co-production of some, perhaps troublesome, compounds based on Nitrogen, including, for instance, Ammonia, "NH4".

United States Patent: 3950369

There isn't much conceptually new to be found in this dispatch.

It just reveals further, authoritative confirmation of the fact, that, if we are so darned worried about Carbon Dioxide, then, we can just collect it and convert it into the versatile and nearly-precious Methanol.

United States Patent Application: 0080023338

As we have previously reported, the United States Department of Energy, in it's wisdom, has farmed out management of our vital National Energy Technology Laboratories to consortiums of public and private corporations.

In addition to getting paid, with our tax money, to manage the labs, built with our tax money, those corporations are also authorized to assume at least partial ownership of the patent rights to the technologies that are developed in those laboratories by scientists whose salaries are paid with our tax money.

Thus, the patent rights to inventions arising from our Idaho National Laboratory, or INL, for one instance, are assigned to the INL's corporate managers: Battelle Energy Alliance.

United States Patent: 4597776

Not only Methane, but an appreciable amount of liquid fuel, in the form of Benzene, as well, can be manufactured by the Steam-Coal Hydro-Gasification process our USDOE saw fit to pay a California aerospace and defense contractor to develop.

Within the Disclosure, we find even further confirmation of an important point that we have many times documented from other sources, which is:

The Hydrogen needed, to hydrogenate Coal's primarily Carbon content, and to thereby convert Coal into hydrocarbons, can be extracted from H2O, in the form of Steam, introduced into various stages of a Coal gasification process.