Hydrocarbons From Low Value Lipids and Algae

在过去的几十年里，工业生物精炼的兴起见证了包括乙醇和生物柴油在内的第一代生物燃料的大规模部署。这种急于部署与传统能源部门不直接兼容的技术的做法产生了一些负面影响，包括食品与燃料的争论、间接的土地使用问题，以及对经济和可持续性的普遍担忧。各国政府随后在第二代纤维素乙醇的开发上投入了大量资金，然而燃料和化学工业一直坚定不移地希望看到生物燃料的部署与他们现有的基础设施和运营更加兼容。之前NSERC发现资助项目对Bressler博士实验室的投资已经看到了一项现已获得专利的脂质转化碳氢化合物技术的发现，该技术能够将所有传统的脂肪和油来源，包括所有植物油，废弃动物脂肪和餐馆用过的油脂，直接转化为真正的碳氢化合物燃料，溶剂和化学品，与工业传统使用的相同，而无需使用催化剂或氢。这些发现现在正在通过其他资金和工业投资转化为工业，并已经启动了一所新的大学。然而，为了使这类新技术真正充分发挥其潜力，在寻找更理想的原料方面出现了问题，包括藻类油、森林中的高脂油，甚至是从城市废物流中提取的脂肪和油。申请的NSERC发现拨款将重点研究将这些新的和更麻烦的原料预处理成与新开发的技术兼容的形式。该研究的第二个目标将是为这些新原料的加工过程中产生的甘油和富含营养的副产品流寻找其他应用。我们的目标是真正了解这些新材料加工过程中的特性和机制，从而开发出真正具有颠覆性的先进生物能源技术。

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.