Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Canada is a leader in setting long-term and short-term targets for blending biofuels in transportation fuels. Biodiesel is biodegradable, non-toxic and can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Although biodiesel as a fuel has many desirable qualities, such as a good cetane number and lubricity, the amount of biodiesel that can be added to a petroleum diesel blend is often limited to 5% or less due to poor storage stability, marginal cold flow properties, excessive solvency and engine compatibility issues. Trans-esterification is currently the primary route for producing biofuels from vegetable oils. However, trans-esterificationbecomes very challenging when low quality oils are used as the feedstock due to the presence of undesirable components especially free fatty acids (FFAs) and water. Achieving widespread use of biofuels depends on the development of new process technologies. Through the proposed research, hydroprocessing technology will be investigated as a way to utilize widely available vegetable oil feedstock to produce an isoparaffin-rich diesel substitute. This product, referred to as green diesel, is an aromatic and sulfur free diesel fuel that has a very high cetane blending value. A magnetically recyclable catalyst will be developed and applied in the upgrading process to produce green diesel from bio-oils. The proposed catalyst and upgrading process will address the current challenge of upgrading bio-oils: quick deactivation of catalyst.