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We continue to chronicle the development of technologies that enable the efficient conversion of Coal into the liquid hydrocarbon fuels we've enslaved ourselves to OPEC for the supply of, with yet another example from one of the companies that coalesced into that lovable giant, ExxonMobil.
And, note, We the People paid for Exxon to develop this Coal liquefaction technology, as in this advance excerpt from the full text, as available through the link:
"Government Interests: The government of the United States of America has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. E(49-18)-2353 awarded by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration."
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We have lately been documenting a couple of important facts concerning the technologies that exist for converting our abundant Coal into gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons - products that can serve as direct replacements for natural gas and petroleum.
One fact is that a properly-designed and specified Coal conversion process, made commercially feasible and economically possible by the scale of Coal's available volume, can allow for the inclusion of other, biological and renewable, feed stocks.
Thus, elements of both sustainability and Carbon recycling can be included in an operation centered on the manufacture of liquid hydrocarbon fuels and substitute "natural" gas from Coal.
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Our header, "Coal Reduces CO2", is related to some of our earlier dispatches, and some to follow, wherein we explained that "reducing" Carbon Dioxide, in the truly technical, chemical sense, means changing it's molecular structure, and the electrical charges of the atoms which compose it, so that the elemental constituents of the relatively inert CO2, Carbon and Oxygen, would become "available" for chemical reaction with other elements, and that Carbon Dioxide could subsequently be broken down, or incorporated into other chemical compounds.
Only coincidentally does such chemical reduction lead, through resulting chemical reactions, to an actual physical reduction in the amount of CO2.
We also earlier documented that Carbon Dioxide could be chemically reduced to the more reactive Carbon Monoxide, which is very amenable to further reactions and conversion into useful hydrocarbons, by the simple expedient of passing Carbon Dioxide, in the relative absence of Oxygen, over red-hot Coal.
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Our headline does not really do justice to this pre-merger Mobil technology for Coal conversion.
As we have reported to be feasible and practical in other, similar, Coal technologies we have documented for you, Mobil are herein obtaining not only Gasoline from Coal, but, in addition, a synthetic "natural" gas consisting primarily of Methane.
We remind you that, In an earlier dispatch, we reported "United States Patent 4,046,830 - Upgrading Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Products", which was awarded to Mobil Oil Corporation, in September of 1977, for an improvement on technology that converts Coal into Gasoline.
In this report, we begin to see, and as we will see in reports to follow in coming days, with advance apologies for any repetition that might occur relative to other, earlier dispatches, that the year 1977, and the month of September specifically, should have been hallmarked by headlines of hope on all of the newspapers throughout United States Coal Country.
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A few days ago, we submitted documentation, in our report of the "Development of an Improved Sabatier Reactor", about a presentation made at the ASME Conference on Environmental Systems, back in 1979, by US Department of Defense contractors United Technologies, that our own government has most likely known now for more than thirty years that Carbon Dioxide can be converted into Methane.
Of course, as we've tediously documented, Europe's Nobel Committee has known that since 1912.
That's when the original "Sabatier Reactor" that converts CO2 to Methane, which our Defense contractors were working, in the 1970's, to improve, became, or should have become, public knowledge.
We have also, from other sources, including Penn State University, documented technologies wherein Carbon Dioxide can be recycled, through it's use as a raw material in the synthesis of even higher, liquid hydrocarbons.
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