Production of clean and renewable energy and chemicals from biomass and oilsands bitumen

该提案的重点是从生物质中开发可再生能源和化学品，以及一种更绿色的工艺，以提升加拿大沥青和重油资源。利用生物质资源生产能源和化学品将减少绿色温室气体的排放和全球变暖的灾难性影响。生物质资源中含有大量的含氧化合物，如乙醇、丁醇、油脂、废弃食用油和动物油脂以及生物油等。为了利用生物质衍生的原料，应该去除氧官能团以增加生物质衍生的燃料的能量密度，并且还减少储存不稳定性和腐蚀问题的问题。然而，缺乏用于选择性去除氧并将分子重整为类似于当前汽油和柴油化合物的那些分子的有效方法。为了生产“绿色”汽油或柴油衍生的生物资源，需要新型催化剂和方法。我们的研究将开发新型催化剂，使用最先进的制备和表征技术，用于去除氧官能团，并将生物资源转化为绿色汽油，柴油和化学品。 催化蒸馏是一种更节能的反应器技术，将在适用的情况下用于工艺开发。目前，生物质只能满足全球能源需求的一小部分。因此，需要利用沥青和重油。 我们提出开发一种新的沥青改质方案，其利用与沥青提取和改质相关的“脏水”和焦炭来提供氢气以将沥青改质为高质量油，同时，利用“脏水”来提供氢气并清除过量的“脏水”。这种新工艺将显著减少油砂沥青开发的尾矿池和环境足迹。

This proposal is focused on the development of renewable energy and chemicals from biomass and a greener process to upgrade the Canadian bitumen and heavy oil resources . Utilization of biomass resources for the production of energy and chemicals will reduce the emission of green house gases and the disastrous effects of global warming. Biomass resources contain a large amount of oxygen containing compounds such as in the ethanol, butanol, fats, waste cooking oil and animal fats and bio-oils. In order to utilize the biomass derived feedstocks, the oxygen functional groups should be removed to increase the energy density of the biomass derived fuel and also to reduce the problems with instability on storage and corrosion issues .However, efficient processes for the selective removal of the oxygen and reformation of the molecules to those resembling the current gasoline and diesel compounds are lacking. To produce the "green" gasoline or diesel derived bioresources, novel catalysts and processes are required. Our proposed research will develop novel catalysts, using state of the art preparation and characterization techniques, for the removal of the oxygen functional group and to transform the bioresources to green gasoline, diesel and chemicals. Catalytic distillation, a more energy efficient reactor technology, will be used for process development if applicable. At present, biomass can only supply a small portion of the global energy demand. Therefore utilization of bitumen and heavy oil will be required. We propose to develop a novel bitumen upgrading scheme which utilizes the "dirty water" and the coke associated with bitumen extraction and upgrading to provide the hydrogen to upgrade the bitumen to a high quality oil and at the same time, the " dirty water" is utilized to provide the hydrogen and the excess "dirty" water is cleaned up. This novel process will significantly reduce the tailings ponds and the environmental footprint from the development of the oilsands bitumen.