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诸如液态焦炭之类的废物。仅在艾伯塔省，油砂流体焦炭的日产量就超过1万吨。由于其高硫含量，生产的所有液态焦炭都被添加到现有的库存中（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，预计焦炭的硫含量也会增加。由于需要提供昂贵的烟气净化，油砂石油焦的高硫含量限制了其作为燃料的使用。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烟气，这是酸雨的前兆。在NSERC的支持下，我们开发了一项新技术——SOactive工艺，它以可销售的形式捕获二氧化硫，同时将废焦炭转化为一种新型的活性碳（eccarbon），这是一种非常有价值的材料，具有广泛的环境和工业应用。这项拟议的研究是为了优化ECOcarbon的结构和化学，使其在以下几个领域具有最佳性能：作为控制燃煤电厂和金属冶炼厂汞排放的吸附材料，以及用于空气和水的净化；作为一种提高能源效率和减少温室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——这是一种新型材料，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温室气体和酸性气体。我们相信，我们研究的预期进展将帮助这个国家成为可持续能源和金属生产的世界领导者，创造高薪工作，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.