Grant: Alliance Grants

With a worldwide production volume of 15 million tons per year (~ $17B/year), Carbon Black (CB) is the largest nanomaterial by volume and value on the market today and is mainly used as a reinforcing agent or pigment in rubber and tire industry. CB is primarily manufactured by the so-called furnace process where about 50% of the total fossil fuel used in the process is combusted to convert the rest of the utilized fossil fuel into CB . Typically, the initially combustion fossil fuel is either natural gas or heavy fuel oil, then heavily fuel oil is used as a feedstock for the formation of CB. However, this process suffers from low mass yield and excessive emission, generating 4 tons of CO2 per each ton of product on average, which makes it undesirable in terms of energy efficiency, sustainability, and environmental impacts. There is a strong need to move to a process where the net CO2 impact is greatly reduced or even zero. Unfortunately, this is not a trivial switch, as both yield and quality of CB produced reduce greatly when utilizing renewable feedstocks. Birla Carbon Canada Ltd, one of the largest CB manufacturers in the world, desires to understand how they can use renewable feedstocks while maintaining yield and quality. The proposed partnership between Birla and the University of Windsor will provide Birla with enhanced modeling tools they need to achieve this goal.