Fundamental aspects of sustainable energy and metal productions

加拿大拥有世界上最大的碳氢化合物资源库，其中很大一部分是油砂中的沥青。 将沥青升级为原油会产生液体焦炭等废物。 仅在阿尔伯塔，油砂液态焦的产量就超过每天10000吨。 由于其高硫含量，所有生产的液体焦炭都被添加到现有库存中（超过5000万吨）。鉴于油砂在加拿大能源组合中的重要性日益增加，石油焦的产量将增加。 随着越来越多的硫被拒绝，以满足日益严格的低硫运输燃料的环境法规，焦炭硫含量也预计会增加。油砂石油焦的高硫含量限制了其作为燃料的使用，因为需要提供昂贵的烟道气净化。 加拿大也是铜和镍等一系列有色金属的主要生产国。 冶金过程经常产生含有二氧化硫的废气--酸雨的一种前兆。 在NSERC的支持下，我们开发了一种新技术- SOactive工艺，该工艺以可销售的形式捕获二氧化硫，同时将废焦炭转化为新型活性炭（ECOcarbon）-一种具有广泛环境和工业应用的高价值材料。 这项拟议的研究是为了优化生态碳的结构和化学性质，使其在以下几个领域发挥最佳性能：作为控制燃煤发电厂和金属冶炼厂汞排放以及空气和水净化的吸附剂材料;作为提高能源效率和减少绿色家庭气体排放的电能储存材料。 另一个研究方向是离子液体的环境应用--这是一类新型材料，因其极低的挥发性而被认为是“绿色”的。 我们的长期目标是开发新型离子液体技术，以更节能的方式捕获绿色家庭气体和酸性气体。 我们相信，我们的研究取得的预期进展将有助于这个国家成为可持续能源和金属生产的世界领导者，创造高薪就业机会，提高所有加拿大人的生活质量。

Canada has the world's greatest repository of hydrocarbon resources, a large portion of them are bitumen in oil-sand. Upgrading bitumen to crude oil produces waste such as fluid coke. In Alberta alone the production of oil-sand fluid coke exceeds 10000 tonnes per day. Due to its high sulphur content, all fluid coke produced is being added to the existing stockpiles (over 50 million tonnes). Given the increasing importance of oil sand in Canada's energy portfolio, the production of petroleum coke will increase. As more sulphur is being rejected to meet the increasingly stringent environmental regulations for low-sulphur transportation fuel, an increase in the coke sulphur content is also anticipated. The high sulphur content of oil sand petroleum coke limits its use as a fuel due to the need to provide expensive flue gas cleanup. Canada is also a major producer of a range of non-ferrous metals such as Cu and Ni. Metallurgical processes often produce flue gases containing sulphur dioxide - a precursor of acid rain. With the support from NSERC, we developed a new technology - SOactive process which captures sulphur dioxide in a salable form and, at the same time converts the waste coke to a novel active carbon (ECOcarbon) - a highly valuable material that has a range of environmental and industrial applications. This proposed research is to optimize the structure and chemistry of ECOcarbon for it best performance in several areas: as a sorbent material for controlling mercury emission from coal-fired power plants and metal smelters and for air and water purification; as an electric energy storage material for increased energy efficiency and for reduced the green house gas emissions. Another line of research is environmental applications of ionic liquids - a new class of materials that are considered to be "green" for their extremely low volatility. Our long term goal is to develop novel ionic liquid-based technologies for capturing green house gas and acid gas in a much more energy efficient way. We believe the anticipated advance in our research will help this country become a world leader in sustainable energy and metal production, create high-pay jobs, and improve the quality of life of all Canadian.