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In an earlier report, now available as: USDOE Converts CO2 to Liquid Fuel | Research & Development | News; we documented: United States Patent: 3959094 - Synthesis of Methanol from Carbon Dioxide; 1976;
Inventor: Meyer Steinberg; Assignee: The United States of America; wherein USDOE Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist Steinberg reveals a process wherein, as the Patent's title indicates, reclaimed Carbon Dioxide can be converted into the liquid fuel and plastics manufacturing raw material, Methanol.
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In two recent reports, which are now available on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site as:
USDOE Hydrogasifies Coal with Solar Power | Research & Development | News;
and:
NASA Hydrogasifies Coal with Solar Power | Research & Development | News;
we documented how both NASA and the USDOE had each developed very similar technologies, both now almost three decades old, which enable the use of solar energy for, as each put it, respectively: "gasifying carbonaceous material" and "heating a piece of carbon ... with steam (and) thereby enabling formation of the gaseous fuel".
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We have several times documented and referred to the operation of, decades ago, a Coal hydrogenation and conversion facility in South Charleston, WV, by the old Union Carbide Corporation, which has since been assimilated by Dow Chemical.
Herein, we see that one of Union Carbide's West Virginia scientists, in collaboration with others, developed a method which enables the further cleaning and refining of a hydrocarbon synthesis gas which, as they reveal, "can be produced by the partial oxidation or steam-reforming ... and ... gasification of coal".
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Liquid process for manufacture of motor fuel
You have to read very closely to discern the facts, but:
All of the by-product Carbon Dioxide generated by the Coal conversion process herein described is recycled back into the synthesis gas generator, to be reacted with more hot Coal and Steam, and with other products of the process, to be thereby converted, in such combined reactions with Coal and Steam, into additional Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide - the components of hydrocarbon synthesis gas from which liquid hydrocarbons are catalytically condensed.
Further, close examination of the schematics reveals some important facts about those combined reactions:
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Herein is further confirmation of a fact which we have, from other sources, previously documented:
Treating Coal, prior to steam-gasification done to generate a fully-hydrogenated hydrocarbon synthesis gas, with certain alkali metal hydroxides, such as you might find in inexpensive drain cleaners, can improve the rate and efficiency of Coal's conversion into such hydrocarbon syngas.
Exxon figured that out for themselves, as confirmed herein by our United States Government, a shade more than three decades ago.
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