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次国家司法管辖区，将大麻合法化或合法化。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使大麻合法化的国家，但它将是第一个这样做的工业化大国。因此，加拿大具有得天独厚的优势，可以开发并可能商业化有助于向零排放大麻产业过渡的技术和工艺。 鉴于大麻业在上个世纪的大部分时间里在世界大多数地方都是非法的，因此，大麻业的运作不受环境立法的限制，因此，典型的大麻生产活动可能消耗大量的水和电，同时产生废物流，其中可能包括无法使用的植物材料、有毒溶剂和二氧化碳。此外，通常用于提取各种植物油和种子油的方法使用溶剂提取技术，所述溶剂是有毒的、易燃的或需要高压的溶剂。 为了使新兴的大麻工业尽量减少上述废物流的产生，化学工程师需要获得基本的相关相平衡和化学平衡;目前，这种基本的热力学知识还不存在。因此，目前NSERC DG应用程序的目标是为新兴的大麻产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系统的相平衡的测量和相关性。第二项研究的重点将是评估最先进的“绿色溶剂”溶解植物油的有效性。将要研究的“绿色溶剂”被称为深铕溶剂（DES）。第三个项目的目标是从大麻籽油中生产生物柴油，随后可以为种植者提供现场液体燃料来源。在这个项目中，我将在高压下进行大麻籽油的非催化酯交换反应，我将测量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.