Production of clean and renewable energy and chemicals from biomass and oilsands bitumen

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This proposal is focused on the development of renewable energy and chemicals from biomass and a greener process to upgrade the Canadian bitumen and heavy oil resources . Utilization of biomass resources for the production of energy and chemicals will reduce the emission of green house gases and the disastrous effects of global warming. Biomass resources contain a large amount of oxygen containing compounds such as in the ethanol, butanol, fats, waste cooking oil and animal fats and bio-oils. In order to utilize the biomass derived feedstocks, the oxygen functional groups should be removed to increase the energy density of the biomass derived fuel and also to reduce the problems with instability on storage and corrosion issues .However, efficient processes for the selective removal of the oxygen and reformation of the molecules to those resembling the current gasoline and diesel compounds are lacking. To produce the "green" gasoline or diesel derived bioresources, novel catalysts and processes are required. Our proposed research will develop novel catalysts, using state of the art preparation and characterization techniques, for the removal of the oxygen functional group and to transform the bioresources to green gasoline, diesel and chemicals. Catalytic distillation, a more energy efficient reactor technology, will be used for process development if applicable. At present, biomass can only supply a small portion of the global energy demand. Therefore utilization of bitumen and heavy oil will be required. We propose to develop a novel bitumen upgrading scheme which utilizes the "dirty water" and the coke associated with bitumen extraction and upgrading to provide the hydrogen to upgrade the bitumen to a high quality oil and at the same time, the " dirty water" is utilized to provide the hydrogen and the excess "dirty" water is cleaned up. This novel process will significantly reduce the tailings ponds and the environmental footprint from the development of the oilsands bitumen.