SBIR Phase I: Continuous Flow Fixed-bed Biodiesel Production from Algae Oil

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目是开发一种高能效，高通量连续流固定床反应器技术，用于经济高效的海藻油生物柴油生产。海藻油已成为大规模生产生物柴油以取代美国所有运输燃料的最有前途的来源之一。在不久的将来，大量的海藻油将可用于生物柴油生产。然而，目前的商业生物柴油生产工艺-均相催化剂基酯交换工艺-在过去二十年中没有太大变化，并且远远没有达到高效。除了该均相碱催化方法所需的显著的资本成本之外，中和和洗涤方法以及废水的产生沿着是能量和劳动密集型的，并且不是环境友好的。为满足藻类生物柴油的大量生产需求，实现藻类生物柴油经济，需要开发一种新的高效节能、高通量的生物柴油生产工艺。在第一阶段，研究将集中在评估藻油组成，优化固定床反应器配置和操作条件，生产ASTM D 6751标准生物柴油，并证明技术可行性。该技术在藻油生物柴油生产中的成功应用将显著提高生物柴油生产率，简化产品分离和纯化，提高甘油质量，消除洗涤步骤和相关的废物流，并降低工厂规模和资本成本。这将反过来导致用高效的固定床非均相催化工艺生产藻油生物柴油来取代低效率的均相催化剂生物柴油生产工艺，加速用国产替代燃料替代石油柴油，降低能源消耗及其相关的环境影响，减少美国对外国石油进口的依赖，并使美国运输业在国内和世界市场上保持强大的竞争地位。这项技术将在我们公司商业化。此外，我们将向生物柴油生产商或植物开发商发放许可证，使其可用于整个生物柴油行业。通过与美国最大的生物柴油公司合作，这项技术将在三年内实现商业化。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to develop a highly energy efficient, high throughput continuous flow fixed-bed reactor technology for cost-effective algae oil biodiesel production. Algae oil has emerged as one of the most promising sources for mass biodiesel production to replace all transportation fuel in the U.S. A large amount of algae oil will be available in the near future for biodiesel production. However, the current commercial biodiesel production process - a homogeneous catalyst based transesterification process - has not changed much in the last two decades and is far from being efficient. In addition to the significant capital costs required for this homogeneous alkali-catalyzed process, the neutralization and washing processes, along with the production of waste water, are energy and labor intensive and not environmentally friendly. To meet the mass algae oil production demand and achieve the algae biodiesel economy, a new highly energy efficient and high throughput biodiesel production process needs to be developed. In Phase I, research will focus on evaluating the algae oil composition, optimizing the fixed-bed reactor configuration and operating conditions, producing ASTM D6751 standard biodiesel, and proving the technical feasibility. The successful application of this technology to algae oil biodiesel production will significantly increase biodiesel productivity, simplify product separation and purification, improve glycerin quality, eliminate the washing step and associated waste stream, and reduce the plant size and capital costs. This will, in turn, lead to the replacement of the low-efficiency homogeneous catalyst biodiesel production process with a highly efficient fixed-bed heterogeneous catalytic process for algae oil biodiesel production, expedite the substitution of petroleum diesel with domestically produced alternative fuel, decrease energy consumption and its associated environmental impact, reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil imports, and enable the U.S. transportation industry to sustain a strong, competitive position in domestic and world markets. This technology will be commercialized in our company. Additionally, we will license it to biodiesel producers or plant developers to make it available to the entire biodiesel industry. With collaborations with the largest biodiesel companies in the U.S., this technology will be commercialized within three years.