Generating Fundamental Thermodynamic Data and Correlations for Canada's newest Cash Crop Industry

2018年，加拿大将加入越来越多的国家和地方司法管辖区的行列，推动大麻合法化或非刑事化。预计此举将创造一个年销售额超过80亿美元的行业。虽然加拿大不会是第一个在联邦一级将大麻合法化的国家，但它将是第一个这样做的工业化大国。因此，加拿大独一无二地准备开发技术和工艺，并可能将其商业化，以促进向零排放大麻产业的过渡。*鉴于大麻工业在上个世纪的大部分时间里在世界大部分地区都是非法的，它的运作不受环境立法的限制，因此，典型的大麻业务可能会消耗大量的水和电，同时产生可能包括不可用的植物材料、有毒溶剂和二氧化碳的废流。此外，通常用于提取各种植物油和种子油的工艺使用的是使用有毒、易燃或需要加压的溶剂的溶剂提取技术。*为了使新兴的大麻工业最大限度地减少上述废气的产生，化学工程师需要获得基本的、相关的相平衡和化学平衡；目前，这一基本的热力学知识尚不存在。因此，目前NSERC DG应用程序的目标是为新兴的大麻行业生成相平衡和化学平衡数据。这些数据将来自三个相关但独立的项目。第一个项目涉及含有溶解在挥发性有机溶剂中的大麻植物油的体系的相平衡的测量和关联。第二项研究的重点将是评估最先进的“绿色溶剂”对溶解植物油的效果。将被研究的“绿色溶剂”被称为深度共晶溶剂(DES)。第三个项目的目标是从大麻籽油中生产生物柴油，这将为种植者提供现场液体燃料来源。在这个项目中，我将在加压下进行大麻籽油的非催化酯交换反应，并测量该反应的热力学平衡转化率。

In 2018, Canada will join a growing list of national and sub-national jurisdictions in either legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. It is expected that this move will create an industry with annual sales of over $8B. While Canada will not be the first country to legalize cannabis at a federal level, it will be the first large industrialized nation to do so. Thus, Canada is uniquely poised to develop, and possibly commercialize, technologies and processes that will facilitate a transition towards a zero-emissions cannabis industry. ***Given that the cannabis industry has been illegal in most of the world for the better part of the last century it has operated outside of the constraints of environmental legislation and, as a result, typical cannabis operations can consume vast quantities of water and electricity while simultaneously producing waste streams that may include unusable plant material, toxic solvents and carbon dioxide. Additionally, processes that are commonly used for extracting the various plant oils and seed oils use a solvent extraction technique with solvents that are toxic, flammable or that require elevated pressure.***In order for the emerging cannabis industry to minimize the production of the aforementioned waste streams, chemical engineers need have access to fundamental, relevant phase equilibrium and the chemical equilibrium; currently, this fundamental thermodynamic knowledge does not exist. Thus, the goal of the current NSERC DG application is to generate phase equilibrium and chemical equilibrium data for the emerging cannabis industry. This data will come from three related, but independent, projects. The first project involves the measurement and correlation of phase equilibrium in systems containing cannabis plant oils dissolved in the volatile organic solvents. The focus of the second study will be to evaluate the effectiveness of state-of-the-art “green solvents” for dissolving plant oils. The “green solvents” that will be investigated are known as Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES). The third project targets the production of biodiesel from hempseed oil, which could subsequently provide growers with an onsite source of liquid fuel. In this project, I will conduct uncatalyzed transesterification reactions of hempseed oil at elevated pressure and I will measure thermodynamic equilibrium conversion of the reaction.*****