Hydrocarbons from lipid feedstocks

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The research program will focus on investigating the conversion of fats and oils to second generation biofuels. Specifically the research will focus around the fundamental chemistry and kinetics of unsaturated fatty acids under pyrolytic conditions. The anticipated products will be true hydrocarbons and therefore are expected to not only be renewable, but will be directly compatible to the existing petrochemical and fuel industry. The approaches utilized are adapted from bitumen upgrading research, at which the University of Alberta is a world leader, and thus equipment, protocols and the insights on reaction chemistry are well understood by the research group. The proposed program is a continuation of Dr. Bressler's current NSERC Discovery program which has resulted in several significant breakthroughs in this area. This application is focused on building upon the successes of the current program and expands the research to address several fundamental questions that remain to be answered. The previous round of funding resulted in several manuscripts and pending United States of America and International PCT patent applications that were the result of utilizing a fundamental research approach employing model compounds to study high temperature thermal processing of lipids to hydrocarbons. Novel pyrolytic approaches were developed that revealed the parameters critical for batch conversion of triglycerides to hydrocarbons through a two step process.