Upgrading waste oil to biodiesel via catalytic distillation

减少温室气体排放最近成为包括加拿大在内的许多国家的一个重要的社会和政治问题。能源效率和利用可再生资源作为燃料和化学品的原料是在不久的将来减少温室气体排放的解决方案之一。该提案的重点是开发一种更节能、更环保的生产生物柴油的工艺。生物柴油是一种可再生的绿色燃料，通常是通过使用碱性催化剂（如NaOH）将油中的甘油三酯与甲醇进行酯交换而生产的。目前，植物油是生物柴油的主要原料，但使用粮食供应和农业用地生产运输燃料是一个社会问题。使用含有游离脂肪酸的废油生产生物柴油将减少浪费，同时生产可再生燃料。不幸的是，游离脂肪酸会与碱性氢氧化钠反应形成浮渣和肥皂，这给下游分离带来了很多问题。因此，需要一种新的、有效的将废油转化为生物柴油的工艺。该方案将采用催化蒸馏和新型稳定固体酸催化剂将废油升级为生物柴油。催化蒸馏是一种绿色反应器技术，它将催化反应和分离在精馏塔中结合起来，从而获得更高的产品收率。更重要的是，催化蒸馏过程通常更节能。因此，我们建议使用催化蒸馏将废油升级为生物柴油，这将对可再生绿色燃料的生产做出重大贡献。这项研究还将为新兴的生物精炼行业提供训练有素的人才。

The reduction of green house gases recently became an important social and political issue for many countries including Canada. Energy efficiency and the utilization of renewable resources as feedstock for fuel and chemicals are among the solutions to reduce green houses gases in the immediate future. This proposal is focused on the development of a more energy efficient and green process for the production of biodiesel. Biodiesel is a renewable green fuel which is generally produced by the transesterification of triglycerides present in oils with methanol using a basic catalyst such as NaOH. Presently vegetable oils are the predominant feedstocks for biodiesel, but there is a social concern of using food supply and agricultural land for the production of transportation fuels. Using waste oils containing free fatty acids to produce biodiesel will reduce waste and at the same time produce a renewable fuel. Unfortunately the free fatty acids will react with the basicNaOH to form scums and soaps which cause a lot of problems for downstream separation. Therefore a new and effective process for upgrading waste oils to biodiesel is needed. This proposal will apply catalytic distillation together with novel stable solid acid catalysts to upgrade the waste oil to biodiesel. Catalytic distillation is a green reactor technology which combines a catalytic reaction and separation in a distillation column resulting in a higher product yield. More importantly, catalytic distillation processes are generally more energy efficient. Therefore our proposal to use catalytic distillation to upgrade waste oils to biodiesel will be a significant contribution to the production of a renewable green fuel .This research will also provide highly trained personnel for the emerging biorefining industry.