Sustainable Heterogeneous Metathesis of Recycled Vegetable and Non-edible oils: A Green Route to Value-Added Platform Chemical Synthesis

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The long-term goal of the applicant’s research program is to develop food and non-food processing technologies addressing nutritional/health and environmental concerns. Within this framework, he pursued during his 3rd NSERC-Discovery grant, research on the production of functionalized polymer building blocks for high performance bioplastic production using recycled vegetable oil metathesis and heterogeneous metathesis catalysts. He successfully developed methyltrioxorhenium supported on ZnCl2-modified mesoporous Al2O3 as a new heterogeneous active and selective catalyst for methyloeate and triolein self-metathesis. However, even though its activity and selectivity were excellent, its lack of stability due to deactivation at ambiant relative humidity (> 23 % at ambiant temperature) can hamper its large utilization, unless costly dry conditions were applied. For the 5 next years, the applicant intends to continue focusing his efforts in sustainable heterogeneous metathesis of recycled vegetable oils and developing highly active chemoselective and more stable green catalysts for high value-added platform chemical synthesis. The aim of this research proposal is to develop economically profitable processes for the vegetable oil transformation in valuable platform chemicals using functionalized olefin metathesis and a novel library of tunable and stable molybdenum and tungsten carbide-based heterogeneous catalysts. The self-metathesis of methyloleate and triglycerides as well as the cross-metathesis of these substrates with a number of other functionalized olefins with different oleyl groups will be the targeted reactions. The specific objectives of the proposal are: 1) Metal carbide catalysts formulation and characterization. This implies drastic efforts to improve catalysts life span, stability and recycling by developing a new generation of active and chemoselective metal (Mo and W) carbides; 2) Optimization of the reaction operating conditions for methyloleate self- and cross-metathesis with a number of functionalized oleyl compounds over metal carbide-based catalysts; 3) Self-metathesis of model triglycerides simulating typical vegetable oils. For the specific objectives 2) and 3), the reactor aspects will be important to study for this new generation of metathesis catalysts. This implies investigations on adsorption/desorption equilibria, kinetics and reactor simulation and modelling; 4) Self-metathesis of recycled vegetable oils and commercial non-edible oils over selected metal-carbide catalysts. The benefits that would accrue from this project are highly significant to the Canadian fats and oils industry, the Canadian Agri-business overall as well as the Canadian chemical industry. Using this integrated processing technology (catalysts and reactions), a variety of functional groups can be incorporated into the bio-based materials.