The Application

          The patent application and correspondence follow to show how the straight-forward exposition must be modified where the objective changes from explaining to claiming.  The following application is not replete with “legaleze,” but has enough of that stiff and staid, overstated kind of language to please a patent office bureaucrat.  They are only really confident when an application is signed by an attorney so author-inventors must expect conflict.  The first page is the abstract:

United States Patent – Sequestered Carbon Amendment and Fertilization

(75)Abstract

Sequestered Carbon Amendment and Fertilization, SCAF:  a set

of systems for capturing, sequestering and recycling carbon to enhance

agriculture, conserve water, recover lands and produce fuel to create a

carbon economy.  SCAF products include elementary carbon, fiber and

wood, for carbon  sequestration.  Food and fuel recycle carbon without

increasing the net amount in the atmosphere.  SCAF employs captured

elementary carbon as soil amendment and captured carbon dioxide as

fertilizer for green plants. 

United States Patent (Application)

(54)Carbon Sequestration Amendment and Fertilization

(76)Inventor – Adrian Vance, Lakeport, California, United States

(21)                      Appl. No. 60/927,894

(22)                      Filed 05/04/2007

(60)                      Provisional Application No. 60/927,894

(58)        Field of Classification Search 023/295R;  055/385.3, 429, 432  071/38.41;  518/772; 423/364

(77)References Cited –

U.S. Patent Documents

U.S. Patent 3,099,898 by M.J. Harris, Jr., refilling of U.S. Patent 2,943,419 and identical. Fatally flawed with fanciful machines, non-existent devices and science fiction concepts.

U.S. Patent 3,664,134 by Joseph R.M. Seitz.  Predicated on the solubility of gases in hot aqueous solutions thus fatally flawed and invalid.

U.S. Patent 4,133,671 1/9/1979 Merle E. Mikel, “Method and Apparatus For Enhancing Fertilizing Characteristics of Irrigation Water”

U.S. Patent 4,632,044 1/14/85 Sebree J. Allen, “Mobile Fertilizer Distributor”

U.S. Patent 4,675,165 6/23/87 Kuckens et al “Apparatus for Impregnating Water With CO2 Using a Stepped Channel With Multiple Gas Inlets”

U. S. Patent 5,044,117  9/3/91 Alexander Kukens, et al, “Method for Root Fertilization In Cultivated Plants

U. S. Patent 5,671,887 9/30/97 Moise A. Iavarone, “High Pressure Water Sprayer”

U. S. Patent 5,682,709 10/12/97 Stewart Erickson, Recycling Carbon Dioxide to Enhance Plant Growth

U. S. Patent 6,241,163 6/5/01 Artie J. Bremer, “Water Injecting System”

U. S. Patent 6,447,437 9/10/02 James Weifu Lee, “Method For Reducing CO2, CO, NOx and SOx Emissions

U.S. Patent 7,055,325 6/6/2006 Myron B. Wolken, “Process and Apparatus for Generating Power, Producing Fertilizer and Sequestering Carbon Dioxide Using Renewable Biomass

Primary Examiner –

(74)          Attorney, Agent or Firm -  Adrian Vance

3 Claims, 7 Drawing Sheets

Process and Apparatus For

Capturing and Sequestering

Carbon Dioxide and Elementary

Carbon

Background of the Invention

Field of the Invention

         The invention includes processes that capture and sequester or recycle carbon from fossil fuels or the atmosphere to enhance the economy and save most of the water now used in agriculture.  This will have the most positive economic impact of any invention in history, avoid the expense of treating carbon as waste while making it marketable.

Description of the Related Art

Soil Amending

Hand ground charcoal was used to amend Central American soil in antiquity improving it greatly for agriculture. The soil was little more than sand and clay with nothing to hold water or mineral salts other than voids when molecularly compatible surfaces are needed to control moisture.  The practice continues to this day improved only by mechanical grinding.

Ground charcoal particles are much larger and have very little surface compared to elementary carbon allotropes from Cottrell precipitators.  The Cottrell process produces molecular allotropic forms with all having millions of times the surface area of mechanically ground carbon.  And, the electron microscope shows the process produces what are called “Bucky Balls” or Fullerenes.

Carbon Dioxide Fertilizer

Carbon dioxide has been called an “aerial fertilizer,” and generated in commercial greenhouses for 100 years. We make a distinction by dispensing CO2 directly into the soil or in hydroponics solutions directly into the plant culturing medium.   We have demonstrated CO2 enriches soil and is thereby a fertilizer. 

Chemical Gas Capture

          Gases are “scrubbed,” from exhaust. Capture and compression are the oldest, most inefficient and expensive systems.  An ideal system would take everything coming from an engine and compress it, but would use most of the energy produced.  Cottrell precipitators reduce carbon atoms in fuel rich internal combustion exhaust or burners to form molecular allotropes heavy enough to fall in air where carbon atoms would stay airborne and constitute a pollutant.

          Systems have been developed to capture some gases and vapors with cold surfaces in heat exchangers, but these have extremely limited application in combustion systems.  Water is the only vapor in air normally a liquid at ambient temperature.

Any dry hydroxide can be used to capture CO2 because they readily form carbonates with CO2. Sodium hydroxide is normally used in these systems because it is the least expensive.  We irradiate it to encourage crystallization as gamma rays from incorporated nuclear power plant waste ionize CO2 near the sodium hydroxide castings.

          In nature carbon dioxide is captured with water as CO2 is much more soluble than other gases in air, but the water must be cold, dark and still or  CO2 escapes.  Industrial CO2 is produced or captured and kept in pressure vessels.  Some is used to directly make carbonates for glass making and processes where the metal ion (cation) is wanted and the negative (anion) is not.  Carbon dioxide is a harmless gas byproduct.  Other anions like sulfate and nitrate make gases that are both noxious and toxic.

          A typical middle-western cornfield needs ten tons of CO2 per acre for a 120 day growing season and uses 3,200 tons of water to capture the gas in stomata.  This is a very wasteful, inefficient process where CO2 can be supplied through the roots with gas dispensed to existing ground water with very high efficiency.

           The production of motor fuel from captured carbon dioxide and the return of it to commerce is “cyclic sequestering.”  It may not take carbon out of the environment forever, but it does not increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere while it does increase the amount of energy in the economy.

2 Description of related art

Carbon Sequestration

          Carbon dioxide is seen as an environmental threat and waste under the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming.   Legislation will soon call for it to be captured and stored.  Experimental storage schemes are operating around the world, particularly in the North Sea near Norway, in Canada and Japan.  These processes are very expensive and limited.  The only schemes designed to use carbon dioxide are those to recover more oil, but they will result in the release of CO2 gas when the oil is exposed and they will not be economically viable or environmentally acceptable.

Cottrell Precipitator and Bucky Balls

          Carbon has been captured in Cottrell precipitators for 100 years. It was not until the invention of the electron microscope that the nature of the Cottrell product was known.  It was found to be a series of carbon allotropes including geodesic spheres that were called “Bucky Balls” after the geodesic domes of  F. Buckminster Fuller.  Other forms include tubes that look like fishnet stockings.  In any case the material has enormous surface area per unit weight and is perfect for “adsorbing” water and solutions on carbon surfaces.

Carbon amendments to clay and sand soils that normally cannot support plant life make them suitable for agriculture because they “adsorb” water on these surfaces to store it temporarily.  The results were first noticed by the agronomists in Hernan Cortez’ 1519 AD expedition to Central America.  Such soils were seen to be more productive than the best of European soils.  

          Using Cottrell precipitated elementary carbon as a soil amendment permanently puts the element in the ground as elementary carbon (that) does not decay to CO2 as do organic compounds of carbon.  The great surface area of carbon allotropes, compared to hand or machine ground carbon, insures they will be the most effective such soil amendments ever used.

Airborne Fertilizer  

While there have been uses of carbon dioxide as “airborne fertilizer” in greenhouses closed from the atmosphere and several failed attempts to release and control it over field crops, it has never been used directly in soil as fertilizer.  The closest such attempt (patent 4,133,671) we have been able to find called for the solution of water pump engine exhaust in water that would be used in irrigation.  The estimated delivery concentration was 15 ppm CO2 in water.  The objective was to capture oxides of nitrogen for the soil.  Direct or sub-soil application of carbon dioxide was not an objective in patent 4,133,671 

Underground Storage

          Carbon dioxide has been suggested as the gas that should be used to recover oil from rocks and thus used in old oil wells previously pumped dry.  Where it is the nature of oil rock to have twice as much oil trapped in rock as that withdrawn the use of carbon dioxide to force oil from such rocks has not been as successful as steam in oil recovery.  Steam does not have the hazard of offensive out-gassing on reaching the surface.

          The Norwegian government has done experimental work on pumping CO2 into old marine oil fields, but the process is very expensive given all the handling and transporting required.

Greenhouses and Soda Pop

          The only use for CO2 commercially other than in carbonated soda is in enhancing the atmosphere of greenhouses such that they have 700 to 1,000 parts per million of CO2 in air.  This causes the plants to grow twice the normal rates and it constitutes no threat to the greenhouse workers as people can tolerate up to 15,000 parts per million without effect.  Carbon dioxide is not poisonous to animal life.  It is simply not supportive of life, but at 1.5% CO2 equilibrium in air is such that most water vapor precipitates and the air remaining is very drying and irritating to animals as well as reducing the normal defense to airborne agents of infection.

          The CO2 used in greenhouses is made by propane burners that are run very leanly to over-oxygenate the flames and produce no carbon monoxide as it is poisonous to people.  Lean burners are very noisy, but the crackling roar they make confirms they are working properly.

Humus Planting Soil

          The most closely related practice to SCAF technology is the use of humus planting soil for potted plants or in soil wells for starting expensive or fragile plants and transplanting.  The success young plants have growing in humus planting mix is certainly due to the production of carbon dioxide from decaying matter in the humus mix.  When it has all decayed in a month or two the plant is large enough to carry on with the little CO2 the atmosphere offers.  This explanation for the success of “planter mix” or humus rich soil is not in the literature.  The success of humus has been credited to the “richness” of it without defining what that means.

Related Prior Patents

U.S. Patent 2,943,419

          An agricultural process to stimulate crop growth with tractor exhaust gas in a closed system to capture all gases from an engine and dissolve them in water condensed from the exhaust. However, fatally flawed with devices that cannot work without molecules under intelligent control or with Divine Intervention.

U.S. Patent 3,099,898

          Per 2,943,419 by the same inventor, a simplification of the previous apparatus with the addition of an electrostatic sub-system that does not exist unless in a Star Trek episode.

U.S. Patent 3,664,134, Seitz

          Calls for a hot solution of calcium hydroxide to capture CO2 in a vessel conducting internal combustion exhaust at a temperature of 600 Fahrenheit degrees, more that sufficient to boil the solution.  Where it is well known gases are not soluble in aqueous solutions over 176 Fahrenheit degrees this patent is invalid, but does not apply where we are using a solid hydroxide with a radioactive catalyst.

U.S. Patent 4,133,671

          “A method for enhancing fertilizer characteristics of water by adding CO2 and nitrogenous compounds derived from exhaust gas.”  Specifically calls for tuning the engine to produce more oxides of nitrogen than usual.

U. S. Patent 4,632,044

          “A mobile fertilizer distributor apparatus and method including the collection of gasoline products of combustion…” another tractor exhaust collecting and shallow soil injection apparatus.

U.S. Patent 4,675,165

          “An apparatus for impregnating water with CO2” specifically for use in horticulture.  It is designed for use in greenhouses and where the water is in contact with air would release substantial CO2 to the atmosphere.

U.S. Patent 5,044,117

          An aqueous CO2 delivery process is the subject, but it calls for spraying a “natural” carbonated/oxygenated water mixture on plants in a way allowing most of the CO2 to escape to the atmosphere.  That is not acceptable if the objective is to sequester carbon dioxide from the air.

U.S. Patent 5,184,420

          A computerized irrigation and fertilization system for field crops, the mixing, delivering and timing nutrient water streams.

U. S. Patent 5,671,887

          A water injection system “to deliver water directly to the plant and tree roots.”  No mention of any additions, fertilization, etc.

U. S. Patent 5,682,709

          Methods of sequestering carbon dioxide in old mines, geologic voids, etc. and dissolving into irrigation water to enrich the atmosphere immediate to the plants.  Nowhere is root absorption or reducing transpiration included.

U. S. Patent 6,241,163

          “A water injecting system for injecting water into the soil.”  It appears to be entirely concerned with the injection of water with no fertilization materials mentioned.

U.S. Patent 6,447,437

          “Conversion of industrial gases to fertilizer solids for CO2, CO, NOx and SOx for CO2 sequestration to sequester carbon as carbonates,” and “stimulate photosynthetic function of CO2 from the atmosphere by the effect of carbonate containing fertilizer.”  This calls for the decomposition of carbonates in the soil thereby leaving Column II ions to poison the soil.

U.S. Patent 7,055,325

          A process for generating energy and capturing oxides of nitrogen for the purpose of making solid fertilizers.  There is no provision for capturing carbon or carbon dioxide which are also products of the engines.

Analysis of the Prior Art

          Only one of the earlier inventions mentions sequestration, U.S. Patent 6,447,437 and bears any similarity to this application.  It puts carbonates of column II metals which will decay to make poisonous hydroxides forming “alkali soils.”  The soil injections proposed are very shallow.  Paths to the atmosphere are much shorter than those to roots of plants thus the likelihood of a carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere is certain. 

Objectives and Advantages

          SCAF technology converts what has been thought of as garbage and an environmental threat to a valuable commodity that fertilizes food, fiber and fuel crops as well as saves up to 96% of all water used in agriculture which is 70% of all water in the present economy.

Brief Summary of The Invention

The invention includes capturing elemental carbon and carbon dioxide, distribution of elemental carbon to defective soil as an improvement and direct injection of carbon dioxide to good soil at depths greater than one foot for field crops and to depths one-half the height of bushes and trees where it will dissolve in underground water normally present as 10% to 30% of the soil below one foot. There functioning as green plant fertilizer. Empirically:  SCAF is the direct injection of CO2 to existing soil water for use by plants.

Brief Description of the Several Views of the Drawings

Description of the Drawings

Fig. 1 - The Cottrell Precipitator has two metal plates in a chimney, each charged with very high voltage.  The charges attract atoms of elementary carbon causing them to stick on the plate.  They not only accrete, but combine (to form) allotropes now called Fullerenes or “Bucky Balls.” 

The burners 3 generate smoke. Charged plates 1 and 2 electrify the smoke.    The carbon precipitate falls from the charged plates when the particles become too heavy to remain on the plate.  

Fig. 2, Mode 1 – Sodium hydroxide salt fused with a small amount of radioactive uranium salt.  The melted material is then expressed on a large steel roller in which “X” figures have been cut.  This is the trademarked Natrox™ pellet designed not to close pack, but leave spaces for gas to circulate as it passes through the scrubber.

Fig. 2, Mode 2 – The sodium carbonate is wet and heated in a flash boiler (low pressure) pumped collector for commercial carbon dioxide capture.  When the carbon dioxide is gone the heating is continued to fuse the end-product hydroxide so it may be cast on the surface of a steel roller on which has been carved the “X” cut molds to make the NatroX™ pellets.

Fig. 3 – The NatroX™ sodium hydroxide scrubber employs cast sodium hydroxide “X” forms to present more surface area to the gas than the spherical pellets normally produced.  Carbon dioxide including exhaust gas has to pass through the scrubber in a circuitous path designed to put it in contact with the hydroxide for which it will have electrostatic affinity due to local ionization by nuclear waste.  The product sodium carbonate crystals grow on the hydroxide surfaces as fragile dendrite branches that break off and in the vibrating, shaking environment of a motor vehicle fall to the bottom of each tube and into the carbonate collector.

Fig. 4 – A permanent installation features conducting tubes used for CO2 or water as needed by the plants.  The carbon dioxide can be generated by a solar power NatroX™ generator which is a closed tube with an outlet for the gas.  It is charged with pellets and a stoichiometric, sufficient to react, 17% by weight of water to produce gas on heating.  This is a self regulating device as the plants only need CO2 when they can photosynthesize with sunlight, the only time the generator will function.

Fig. 4a – Detail: “Bomb” type generator using heat from any source to produce carbon dioxide from of equal volumes of NatroX™ carbonate and water with heat from any source to drive the reaction.

Fig. 5 – The delivery tubes are placed 12 to 18 inches below the surface in order to supply plants as directly as possible.  This reduces the amounts of materials needed in all cases, increases efficiency, starves weeds as well as discouraging animal and insect pests.

Fig. 6 – A single injector subsoil unit may put carbon dioxide in the soil down to 18 inches.  Moist soil will cave in quickly sealing the work while harrow wheels and rollers insure closure of the furrow to seal the gas in place.

Fig. 7 – An aquatic reactor vessel for the production of algae to ferment for the production of butanol.  It consists of a clear plastic or glass tube with two caps, one with a tube for the delivery of CO2 as well as the decanting of finished butanol.  The second cap is cast concrete for weight to sink the tube to vertical for the separation of butanol from seawater.  Note the valve for admitting seawater.

Fig. 8 – Reactor vessel in the vertical position achieved by extending the bottom holding line.  To separate and recover the fuel the entire tube is lowered 100 to 300 feet to find cold seawater at four Celsius degrees where it is most dense.

Fig. 9 – A one acre algae growing butanol production facility is shown.  The tanks are exposed to sunlight for photosynthesis. The process continues until it peaks.  Then Clostridium acetobutylicum bacillus is introduced to ferment the algae to butanol.  The process continues until the mixture is about 35% n-butanol when the fermentation stops.  The mixture is then dumped to an underground tank to cool to earth temperature of 10 Celsius degrees.  It is then further reduced to 0 Celsius degrees without freezing.  The butanol separates to float to the top from where it can be decanted.  No further processing is required. 

SCAF Flow Chart - At the top we see the conversion of ordinary sodium hydroxide into NatroX™ pellets which are irradiated to enhance the formation of sodium carbonate dendrite crystals by gamma ray ionization of the air near the surface of the cast form, provide identification to facilitate commercialization and the disposition of nuclear waste productively in a way where uranium can be recovered if needed in the event of a national emergency.  Recovery of the uranium salts is technically simple and does not create a security problem as the processing to make bomb material is complicated and expensive.

          NatroX™ functions well to capture CO2 from internal combustion engines or external combustion boilers, but these also produce elemental carbon for soil amending.  The captured CO2 is chemically compressed as well as if 550 atmospheres of mechanical pressure had been applied and the gas can be recovered in high volumes or pressures easily from a “bomb” type pressure reactor with a heater and gas conducting tube as in Fig. 4a.

          Recovered CO2 is used for soil fertilization for plants or aqueous supplementation for algae in both fresh and marine environments.  Heat is used to release the gas from the sodium carbonate in which it is stored and chilling is used to separate butanol from water as they are not miscible and do not require distillation.  

Detailed Description of the Invention

Methods For Capturing and Sequestering Carbon

          This invention relates to the capture and sequestration of carbon used as fuel producing elemental carbon or “carbon black” and CO2.  Elementary carbon is permanently sequestered as it will not decay in soil.  CO2 is used as plant fertilizer for everything from tiny algae to giant trees.

         

Capturing CO2 with NatroX™

          The Cottrell process of electrostatically capturing elemental carbon has been in use since 1907, invented by Frederick G. Cottrell.  It uses very high tension electricity to charge carbon particles in smoke causing them to stick to metal plates, adhere to and combine with like particles until they are sufficiently heavy to fall to the base of the chimney for removal. 

Recently it has been found the Cotrell process produces “Fullerenes,” a class of molecular carbon allotropes in the forms of 50 to 70 carbon atom geodesic spheres named after the developer of the geodesic dome buildings, Dr. F. Buckminster Fuller.  These have high potential in nanotechnology, but as is are an excellent soil amendment due to the great surface area of the allotropes.  

Terra Preta Soils

          Geologists studying soils in Central America and the Amazon basin  frequently found fields of odd black soil they called Terra Preta Soils named after the location where they were first found. They were initially thought to be natural, but archeologists also unearthed pottery shards and large charcoal particles with marks of grinding.  We believe Central American natives observed old fire pits were islands of fertility in otherwise barren savannas so they linked and extended them into fields that were far more fertile than anything known in Europe at the time of Cortez arrival in the New World.  Cortez expedition agronomists marveled at these soils, wrote of them extensively and took samples back to Spain in 1520 AD.

Carbon Soil Amendment

          SCAF uses Cottrell precipitates to recover south western lands that are little more than sand and clay like that in Central America and the Amazon basin.  Carbon amendments made them the most fertile soils ever seen by the first Europeans in the New World.  We improve on that process with much finer carbon precipitates from the Cottrell process which have millions of times the surface area of hand ground charcoal. Elemental carbon can be dispensed with subsoil plows that turn soil over and not spikes used to inject carbon dioxide.  We have many square miles of land in the southwest that are little more than sand and clay ideal for carbon amending.  If these soils were made more absorbing they would retain what water they get, prevent desert flash floods, erosion and create arable lands. 

With SCAF process carbon dioxide soil fertilizer, which produces an immediate 50% reduction in plant water demand, large areas will be newly productive.  And, with the reduction in stomata possible with selection, hybridization and genetic engineering we will have wheat and corn fields that need no more water than desert sagebrush.

          There has long been a rumor of an aquifer under the state of Nevada. It may be small, but with SCAF low water wheat and corn we may make Nevada the granary of the world.   SCAF could well sponsor a new gold rush, the gold of ripe American grain.

          This is predicated on there being enough water in the desert aquifer rumored to be under Nevada having about 50% the water needed to grow wheat without carbon dioxide fertilization today or 94% the water needed to grow genetically improved wheat that has less stoma to release water vapor.  It is not a matter of if, but when this technology is developed as the destinies of green plants and man are one.

          Man-made carbon dioxide largely comes from internal combustion engines.  They present a difficult problem as a prototype three liter engine running at 2,500 revolutions per minute cruising rate uses 7500 liters of air per minute while burning 500 liters of octane vapor coming from 150 ml of gasoline to make 2128 liters of CO2 from an equal volume of oxygen from 11,822 liters of air needing 11 ounces of NatroX™ to capture the carbon dioxide every minute.  Such a car will have to carry 41 pounds of NatroX™ for every hour of operation to stop it from releasing CO2.

Retro-fitting today’s cars will mean making small trailers for all the scrubbing equipment and supplies to capture the carbon dioxide exhaust and this will not be welcomed by the market or voters.  A very lightweight auto and engine will be required to produce a non-polluting automobile.

          Where automobiles now carry enough fuel to operate for seven hours today’s cars will have to tow a trailer carrying 300 pounds of NatroX™ with enough canister capacity and tubing to effect capture of the gas.  This would likely be a six foot long trailer connected to the exhaust pipe and on a trailer hitch creating an articulated vehicle that will be difficult to drive, park and will lose 30% of its’ performance thanks to engine backpressure and trailer mass.

          The car of the future will be a small Diesel-powered; carbon fiber bodied three or four wheeler costing three to five times current car prices. A box with perforated tubes holding no more than ten pounds of NatroX™ can scrub the CO2 from four gallons of gasoline or Diesel fuel.  This is the expected fuel load for the 50 mile per gallon automobiles of the future and will run the car for about four hours.  Automobiles by law will have to carry enough NatroX™ to capture all the CO2 one full fueling would produce.

          When the car is refueled the NatroX™ carbonate is dumped.  Where the material has resale value as a CO2 source the service fee can be small as the salt will be sold.

          NatroX™ is a cast “X” form of sodium hydroxide irradiated with nuclear power plant waste to encourage formation of carbonates on the surface of the hydroxide castings.  Gamma radiation from uranium salts ionize the air immediate to the casting.  Where gamma rays do not travel more than a fraction of an inch from the surface they are not dangerous unless ingested at which point the poison hazard of the hydroxide would be a greater life threat than the radiation trace.

Subsoil CO2 Fertilization

          Carbon dioxide in the SCAF process is injected to a depth of one to three feet in the soil by a manifold system putting long tubes under each row of plants.  The same tubes are used for irrigation in an underground drip type system that is administered to keep the spaces between the plants free of weeds as it will be too dry for weeds to grow.  Gophers and moles will be controlled when the CO2 is delivered as it will suffocate them or cause them to leave the area. 

          Subsoil plows can be used to dispense CO2 to the soil, but that is only a temporary method.  It will require more gas to be sure it diffuses to the roots in the rows and underground irrigation cannot be done this way with any degree of practicality given the weight of water.  We propose this method only as a stop-gap or start-up method.

Nonetheless, the efficiency of subsoil injection is greater than using water as a CO2 solvent by a factor of 114 times when pure gas is handled because of the low solubility of CO2 in water. The injector disturbed soil is immediately restored with a harrow and roller to keep the gas in the soil for solution with native water.

          Laboratory work shows plants respond to a new source for carbon which they show by progressively shutting down stomata and under severe lack of water stress drop leaves and grow new ones of half the original’s size as long as CO2 soil delivery is continued.

We employ water residing in soil as the recipient, carrier and storage medium for CO2.  Where underground water is quiet, cold and dark it is ideal for the solution and storing of carbon dioxide as it forms carbonic acid, a very unstable molecule sensitive to motion and light. 

          The quiet, cold, dark environment that is the subsoil makes it an ideal storage medium for carbon dioxide.  Water is present in the soils from 10% to 30% with sufficient supply for agricultural purposes.  Plant roots find the charged water in the normal course of their development and readily accept carbon dioxide charged water as confirmed by our tests.

Carbon dioxide is used in photosynthesis to make all parts of the plant from the simple sugars to starches, cellulose, fiber, seed and wood.  Carbon dioxide is sequestered until the products are burned for fuel or consumed as food.  In the cases of wood and plastics that can be forever.

Description of the Preferred Embodiment

          Where this system will come to life legislatively instead of from the free market the development and economics will be political.  Lawmakers will require capture of carbon dioxide first.  The NatroX™ systems, other scrubbers or gas capturing units, will be employed and stocks of carbonate and carbon dioxide gas will accumulate.

          A major farm equipment manufacturer will produce subsoil injectors and underground piping systems with gas storage or on-site generators and regulators.  Implementation will be done on demonstration farms that will  report large crop increases plus great water savings.

          New lightweight automobiles will have to be developed and built in numbers while old cars are served with NatroX™ trailers that make them very difficult to drive, inefficient, hard to park, awkward and ugly.  Cars with trailers will become hard to park jokes and disappear within two to three years when most of the passenger fleet will be replaced as the auto industry celebrates its’ greatest years of sales.

Solar Gas Generators

          A solar powered gas generator for heating sodium carbonate is not only possible, but very desirable as it will be self regulating.  Sunlight drives photosynthesis increasing the need for carbon dioxide.  That same sunlight can heat the SCAF generator and make carbon dioxide for the green plants.  The size and generator output are engineering matters.

CO2 captured in carbonates is chemically compressed as well as if it were under 550 atmospheres of pressure, 8100 pounds per square inch, and can be recovered easily with heat. Very little energy is needed to accomplish this task.  SCAF CO2 generators are simple “pipe bomb” type devices with an exit tube for the gas.  They can be any size from thimble to tank car and produce copious quantities of CO2 at high pressures or volumes as needed.  The reaction is very simple:

Na2CO3 + H2O è 2 NaOH + CO2

                For every 100 grams of sodium carbonate we need 17 grams of water. An excess of water only means that some will be left to boil off.

The gas is applied to the soil in two ways:  (1) by injection spikes inserted by hand or mechanically or (2) by perforated tubes buried one to three feet in the ground under the plants.  The gas dissolves in soil water thus the efficiencies of delivery and water saving are very high.  If water is needed it can be supplied to the plants with the same tubes used for the gas much in the manner of a drip system but, with higher efficiency as there is no loss.  The gas also keeps underground insect and animal pests away from the plants by suffocating them with CO2 as well as killing weeds by limiting water to the soil under the plants.

1.45 grams of carbon dioxide dissolve in a kilogram of water. Water is a poor delivery medium for CO2,  0.145% efficiency. Using it would increase our water needs incredibly while drowning plants.  Soil is typically 10% water at a depth of one foot.  From there the percentage rises until at 80 to 100 feet it reaches 30%.  Soil weighs just over two tons per cubic yard it will have from 420 to 1265 pounds of water per cubic yard.  At a depth of one foot the soil will absorb 13.5 pounds of CO2 gas per cubic yard.  Direct delivery of carbon dioxide is practical and efficient.

In a typical middle-western cornfield each acre needs ten tons of CO2 per 120 day growing season.  Today’s plants would use about five tons of injected CO2 with five tons coming from the atmosphere.  As we selectively breed and engineer plants with fewer stomata the gas need will approach ten tons per acre over the 120 day growing season.  This model will work for all field crops and in this first stage will double the harvests.  We expect that another doubling will happen with genetically engineered plants using 99% delivered CO2.

Plants dependent on delivered CO2 cannot escape to the environment as they cannot survive on air supplied CO2  alone.  Therefore, professionally neurotic environmentalists will have no case against modified plants, but creative and unprincipled as they are will likely invent something to protest.

The second major application will be for algae culture in fresh or salt water.  Aqua-farm location will be dictated by availability of deep lakes where most lakes in the central states are shallow and the economics of large scale marine operations are very competitive.  A lake or sea based aqua-farm for producing fuel requires quiet water that is more than 300 feet deep.

A land-based fuel farm can be built using shallow glass-faced growing tanks for the algae.  The algae is skimmed and sent to fermentation tanks using the Clostridium acetobutylicum bacillus that produces up to 35% n-butanol from it.  Algae cells are very small.  When harvested make a finely divided stock ideal for bacterial fermentation with no preparation.  During the fermentation they turn into a black slime mindful of petroleum and from that stuff comes the honey-colored butanol.

Product butanol is not miscible with water so it can be separated by chilling the fermentate to zero degrees and the product decanted.  Where 50 milliliters of water and 50 milliliters of ethanol give 95 milliliters of solution so miscible are their molecules.  But, 50 milliliters each of water and n-butanol make 100 milliliters of a mixture easily separated by lowering temperature to zero Celsius degrees with no freezing required.

Fermentation can be done in algae growing tanks in sunlight to take advantage of sun heat.  When butanol reaches 35% the fermentation stops with the viable algae floating on the top.  Drawing the fermentate from the bottom to underground tanks at the usual soil temperature of 10 Celsius degrees will begin the separation.  The temperature only need be reduced another ten Celsius degrees to 0 Celsius and 93% of the butanol will rise to the top of the tank from where it can be decanted while the growing tanks, reconstituted with fresh water and algae stock for the next growing cycle.

The energy used in separating butanol from water is only 3.4% of that needed for distilling ethanol from a fermentation.  Each gram of ethanol and water require 59 calories to be heated from 20 degree Celsius temperature to 79 degree Celsius vaporization point for ethanol.  Then another 475 calories to vaporize it only to be condensed with 5% of the water carried over, a total of 554 calories/gram.  Ethanol distilled from fermentations retains 5% water which causes problems in pipelines, pumps and engines.  Removing the final 5% water can only be done with very expensive anhydrous salts.  Distilling alcohol a second time leaves 0.7% water, still enough to cause problems.

To separate butanol we only need to cool the fermentate from 20 degrees Celsius to zero degrees without freezing the water and 93% of it floats on top of the water without entraining any water.  This uses only 3.4% of the energy required for ethanol distillation.  Butanol carries only minor traces of water; not enough to cause problems in pipelines, pumps or engines.

In a SCAF Sea Fuel Farm operation the CO2 is put into three foot diameter by 100 foot long flexible, transparent tubes that float during the growing phase.  CO2 is released into the tubes on demand as the pressure is kept at one atmosphere above the ambient at all times.  Pressure declines as algae consume the gas signaling the need for more.

Algae grow quickly, doubling the mass every day if they have enough CO2.  In a few days the growing phase is complete as indicated by no demand for additional CO2 to keep the tube pressure at two atmospheres.  Clostridinium acetobutylicum bacillus is introduced and the fermentation will take a few days and produce CO2 gas.  Completion is indicated when CO2 gas pressure stops rising.  The gas will have to be drawn off and stored during this phase. 

The tube is then lowered vertically to a depth where seawater is four Celsius degrees as seawater is most dense at that point.  As the water chills butanol separates and floats to fill the top 32 feet of the tube. At four degrees nearly 90% of the butanol will come out of water solution.  At this point the bottom valve is opened and fresh sea water admitted as the product butanol is drawn off the top.  If decanting is done carefully no processing will be necessary as the product is finished.

The production of motor fuel from captured carbon dioxide and returning it to commerce is “cyclic sequestering.”  It may not take carbon out of the environment forever, but it does not increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere while it does increase the amount of energy available.  This is enabled by NatroX™ technology.

The trade name “NatroX™” is from the Latin name for sodium, Natrium and the “oXide” of “hydroxide,” hence “NatroX™.  There is one important addition which we use for several important reasons:  The addition of salts of nuclear power plant waste, which will be various uranium and transuranium salts.  These are used because the emission of gamma rays, which are free electrons, promote the formation of sodium carbonate on the arms of the NatroX™ pellet.

The NatroX™ pellet is cast in the form of a cross or “X” to prevent close packing and offer to engine exhaust gas a porous, but circuitous path to the atmosphere such that all CO2 is trapped as carbonate.

The vessel in which this is done can be long and thin which is very compatible with the underside of an automobile.  In a tube the upper half would be for the NatroX™ castings which have been poured in from the top.  The capacity of the feeding tube may have to be divided as the bulk of the load may not fill the reaction chamber until vibration shakes it in place.

For an efficient Diesel one liter engine in a small car getting 50 miles per gallon we will need four gallons of butanol to go 200 miles, the range usually specified for a practical automobile.  Butanol is 65% carbon so four gallons will contain 15.5 pounds of carbon which will make 56 pounds of CO2.  To capture this we will need 103 pounds of the NatroX™ castings in the reactor and in the running it will make 159 lb of sodium carbonate to hold the 15.5 pounds of carbon generated.  At each filling station stop the car will have to acquire four gallons of fuel and 103 pounds of NatroX™ after dumping 137 lb of sodium carbonate.

          The captured carbonate is then heated to 318 Celsius degrees with an equal volume of water to recover the gas in a simple apparatus capable of generating high pressures for distribution of the gas to soil or algae tanks.  Sodium hydroxide residue is then recast in the proprietary “X” forms.

          The fertilizer phase injects carbon dioxide, CO2, directly into the soil where it is absorbed by existing entrained water.  At a depth of one to three feet soil is 10% water, a percentage that rises to over 30% at depths of 80 feet.  The plans include genetic engineering a reduction in number and sizing of stomata to reduce water consumption.

Carbon Offsets

          SCAF produces two kinds of marketable carbon offsets:  Pure carbon and Bound carbon.  Pure carbon comes from Cottrell soil amendments and Bound carbon from corn and wheat stover, the stalks and stems left in the field and ploughed under as soil amendment.  Carbon offsets may be marketed as part of the SCAF technology.  In the case of Cottrell precipitates the formula would be based on the fact that it is pure carbon.  For plant matter to be ploughed under carbon mass will have to be computed from the amount of stover generated by each crop and that such material is usually 44% carbon.  Documents regarding the location and amount of the carbon permanently buried would be issued for each contract sold.

Note:  The application includes illustrations or “Figures,” which follow and a separate section of “Claims,” which are omitted to preserve the viability of our legal position and claim on the technology.  Most of the strength of a patent pending lies in what the potential infringers do not know about the claims.

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Adrian Vance, 1440 Ricca Court, Lakeport, CA 95453 707-263-6739

May 12, 2008

Commissioner for Patents

P.O. Box 1450

Alexandria, VA 22313-1450

Re: Application # 12/148,510

Gentlemen:

          Thank you for your swift attention to my submission.  Where I am not a pro at this I did expect a return for something and these are understandable.

          The instructions I read on your website and the book I bought on this subject indicated the fees were to be sent to another office.  A bank printout of the front and back of the cancelled fee check is here included.

          The Abstract is here included on a separate, unnumbered sheet.  This Abstract, nor the application document, contain any new matter.  The claims have been reduced from 12 to three by the elimination of some and the consolidation of several, but in no way has anything new been included.

          The drawings have been repaired and reprinted.  Some of the originals were in color  that prints as a thatch-like background, now eliminated for clarity.

          Enclosed you will find my check for $425 which includes the $65 surcharge, $255 search fee and the $105 examination fee.

Sincerely,

Adrian Vance

         

Adrian Vance, 1400 Ricca Court, Lakeport, CA 95453 707-263-6739

June 4, 2008

Commissioner for Patents

P.O. Box 1450

Alexandria, VA 22313-1450

Re: Ap. # 12/148,510 and 60/927894

Ladies and Gentlemen:

          Enclosed you will find my check for $155.00 sent in response to your letter of May 29, 2008 entitled, “Notice of Incomplete Reply (Nonprovisional)” and printouts for my checks numbered 200 and 201.

          These checks show that I have paid $580 in these two checks and I am told that $897 was paid on the provisional application for title, “Sequestered Carbon Amendment and Fertilization,” then numbered 60/927,894.

          Contributing to the confusion I followed the instruction to send the fees to one office and the documents to another, but sent the second check, number 201, with the corrected application.

          I would very much appreciate credit for the correct amounts and a refund of that paid in excess.  I wonder why we were charged for two, perhaps three, search fees when it appears only one would be appropriate?

          Please acknowledge receipt of this letter, fees and documents as well that my application is moving forward.

Sincerely,

Adrian Vance

          Soon after this I got a letter objecting to the labeling and quality of my figures.  I repaired them and submitted the following:

Adrian Vance, 1400 Ricca Court, Lakeport, CA 95453 707-263-6739

July 24, 2008

Commissioner for Patents

P.O. Box 1450

Alexandria, VA 22313-1450

Re: Ap. # 12/214,316

Ladies and Gentlemen:

          Enclosed you will find new prints of my Fuel Farm™ application per your request for improvements, your letter of July 16, 2008.

          I hope you will find all in order.

Sincerely,

Adrian Vance

          I became aware of an opportunity to accelerate my review process if my invention were in the area of (1) the environment, (2) energy (3) or I was over 65.  So I wrote the following letter.  In response a gentleman called from the USPTO and informed that my age would be enough, would I send him a copy of my birth certificate?  I FAXed it to him and heard nothing, but soon found that my application had gone to the top of someone’s heap.

          The first response came on March 9, 2009 in a form letter including a long list of flaws and the accusation that I had copied my application from a foreign patent or document!  No citation or evidence was given, but having dealt with other government bureaus I knew that these people did not need to provide evidence or prove their cases.  They are “government” you are crap.

Continue to Correspondence 

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