Grant: Strategic Projects Supplemental Competition

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 basic NaOH 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.