Catalytic Organic Solid Wastes Valorization Using Natural Gas

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As population increases, the pressures on waste streams continue to grow, resulting in increased environmental risk and processing costs. Yet more than 70% of organic solid wastes such as agricultural and forestry wastes contain useful heating value which could be utilized. Natural gas, the cleanest energy source among fossil fuels, is an abundant natural resource widely present in Canada. Due to its chemical inertness and relatively low volumetric energy density, natural gas is currently dominantly used for residential heating and cooking with little use for transportation or chemical production applications.The proposed project aims to develop an innovative integrated catalytic process which can effectively simulteneously convert organic solid wastes and natural gas to high value-added liquid fuels and/or chemicals in an economically profitable and environmentally friendly way and get it successfully demonstrated at a pilot scale with biowastes processing capacity of no less than 1 ton/d on a dry basis and liquid product generation rate of no less than 0.3 ton/d.The outcome from the proposed project will benefit optimizing the utilization of Canada's hydrocarbon resources, while reducing the accompanying environmental impact. The abundance of organic solid waste resources, coupled with the demand for liquid transportation fuel, are key motivators for the proposed design project. The proposed technologies have the potential to impact the operations of the Canadian energy industry and, in turn, could have a social impact in helping to create an energy system not dependent upon traditional sources and conversion methods. Advances in this field should put Canada at the forefront in the development of low-cost carbon resources valorization technologies, which is especially important given the size of the conventional and unconventional resources in Canada, and help Canada maintaining leadership in providing innovative energy solutions with positive economic and environmental impacts.