Engineering a novel biocatalyst for the production of bio-diluents

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In 2015, GHG emissions totaled 20.5 million tonnes across all their facilities. More broadly, CO2 emissions from Canadian oil and sands account for 9.3 per cent of Canada's GHG emissions. Suncor is motivated to reduce the GHG footprint of their oil sands products in order to achieve their sustainability goals. Their long-term vision is to reduce the total emission intensity of the production of their oil and petroleum products by 30% by 2030. Therefore, the goal of this project is to develop technologies that recycle low value CO2 rich waste streams into higher value products. In particular, it is desired CO2 emissions be converted into drop-in renewable fuels and fuel additives (e.g. diluents) that can be blended with traditional crude oil products and processed, if required, in existing refining infrastructure without any equipment modifications or deleterious effect to the components. To that end, this project will utilize the catalytic power of biological process to convert waste streams rich in GHGs to bitumen diluents. Conventional diluent products are currently imported by Suncor from the United States. Hence, a local supply of bitumen diluent could offer a cost savings over the existing supply chain in addition to reduction in the GHG footprint of its operations. The purpose of this research grant in is to develop a novel bio-based route to manufacture bio-diluents in collaboration with Suncor. Creation of an efficient bioprocess that produces high quality bio-diluents, including pentane, capable of replacing petrochemical derived diluents will help producers like Suncor reduce their dependence on bio-diluent imported form the United States. For example, For example, this process would directly capture 3.1 kg of CO2 per kg of pentane produced, allowing Suncor to reduce their carbon emissions and make oil sands extraction more sustainable.