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In our reports yesterday, concerning "US Patent 4,011,153 - Liquefaction and Desulfurization of Coal using Synthesis Gas" and "United States Patent 4.040,976 - Process of Treating Carbonaceous Material with Carbon Dioxide", we documented that, in various Coal conversion and liquefaction processes, valuable Methane gas is, or can be, generated as a by-product.
Should you refer to those reports, you will see statements such as "off-gas could be ... utilized for methane production" and "reactor effluent (can be made) to react further ... to form ... methane".
Aside from the fact that Methane can be utilized to react with recovered and reclaimed Carbon Dioxide, in various "reforming" reactions, such as described best and most lately by Penn State University scientists Craig Grimes and Chunsan Song; and, by former West Virginia University graduate student Mahesh Iyer; and, made thereby to synthesize a variety of valuable liquid hydrocarbons, all as we have documented for you, Methane can, as well, again as we've documented, be utilized to great benefit in some processes of Coal conversion.
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Yesterday, we sent you information concerning: "US Patent Application Number: US2009/0145843A1", labeled as a "Method for Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emission and Water Contamination Potential while Increasing Product Yields from Carbon Gasification and Energy Production", which was submitted in June of last year by a former Gulf Oil scientist, one Paul Ahner, now resident in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and, which described a process wherein Carbon Dioxide could be reacted with Coal, or with any hot Carbon, and thus be converted into Carbon Monoxide.
Such Carbon Monoxide, when combined in appropriate ratio with Hydrogen, would comprise a synthesis gas suitable for catalytic condensation into liquid hydrocarbons; and, the complete process would, as Ahner states it in his Patent Application, thereby "simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase the product yield of clean fuels".
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Herein we see, yet again, that our own United States Government developed, and has in hand, has had in hand for decades, technologies which would long ago have enabled us to start converting our abundant Coal into clean liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
In the US-patented, USDOE-developed Coal conversion technology we report in this dispatch, Federal Government scientists working in Pittsburgh, PA, disclose, in further confirmation of some of our earlier reports, that, not only can Coal be converted into liquid hydrocarbon fuels, but, those liquid fuels can be made to be free of Sulfur contamination.
Further, the USDOE confirms other of our reports, concerning the fact that synthesis gas, generated from Coal, can be made to serve in the hydrogenation of more raw Coal.
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First, as indicated by a number of web-based resources, the named inventor, one Paul Ahner, in this United States Patent Application, which discloses a technique wherein Carbon Dioxide can be utilized in a process of Coal gasification, and be converted therein, along with Coal, into a synthesis gas suitable for catalytic condensation into liquid hydrocarbons, was once a resident of Pittsburgh, PA; where he worked, in the employ of the former Gulf Oil Corporation, as a scientist focused on Coal and Carbon conversion technology.
We are, in fact, including, as a postscript, further documentation of Ahner's Coal conversion and Gulf Oil background.
Now living in Oklahoma, Ahner seems to be working as an independent consultant to the petroleum industry.
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We long ago documented that some "indirect" processes for the conversion of Coal into liquid hydrocarbons, wherein Coal is first converted into a synthesis gas, and which "syngas" is then catalytically condensed into liquid fuels, resulted in the co-production of some greater or lesser amount of a heavy hydrocarbon residue, often referred to as "Fischer-Tropsch wax".
We also reported that such "wax" could be further processed and refined, and made to produce even more liquid hydrocarbons.
Moreover, we have also presented evidence that Coal can be converted not just into liquid fuels, but into the full range of products we now rely on unreliable foreign sources of conventional petroleum for the supply of.
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