Hydrocarbons From Low Value Lipids and Algae

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Over the last couple decades, the rise of industrial biorefining has seen large-scale deployment of first generation biofuels including ethanol and biodiesel. This rush to deploy technologies not directly compatible with our traditional energy sector has had several negative consequences including food vs. fuel debates, indirect land use issues, and general concerns on economic and sustainability grounds. Governments have subsequently heavily invested in development of 2nd generation cellulosic ethanol however the fuel and chemical industries have been unwavering in their interests in seeing the deployment of biofuels more compatible to their existing infrastructure and operations. Previous investments from the NSERC Discovery Grant program into the laboratory of Dr. Bressler have seen the discovery of a now patented Lipid to Hydrocarbon technology capable of converting all conventional sources of fats and oils, including all plant oils, waste animal fats and spent restaurant grease, directly to true hydrocarbon fuels, solvents and chemicals, identical to those traditionally used by the industry, without the use of catalysts or hydrogen. These finding are now being translated to industry through other funding and industrial investment and have seen the launch of a new university start-up. However, for this new class of technology to really reach full potential, questions have arisen around finding even more desirable feedstocks including algal oils, tall oils from forestry and even fats and oils from municipal waste streams. The requested NSERC Discovery grant will focus on investigations into pre-processing these new and more troublesome feedstocks into forms compatible with the newly developed technology. A second goal of the research will be to find additional applications for glycerol and nutrient rich byproduct streams coming from the processing of these new feedstocks. The goal will be to get a true understanding of the characteristics and mechanisms involved in the processing of these new materials to allow the development of a truly disruptive advanced bio-based energy technology.