Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Fuels derived from renewable biological resources such as non-edible vegetable oils offer an attractive blending agent to petroleum products for diesel engine combustion. Biodiesel has fuel properties similar to petroleum diesel and can be used in its pure state or can be blended with conventional diesel fuel. The environmental benefits are substantial. Even at blend levels of 5% biodiesel, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada would be reduced annually by 2.5 million tons of CO2. The addition of 20% biodiesel to standard diesel fuel can reduce fuel consumption by 1-2%, particulate (smoke) emissions by 10%, hydrocarbon emissions by 21% and CO emissions by 11%. Biodiesel from vegetable oils can be prepared either through transesterification or hydrodeoxygenation route. The high oxygen content of vegetable oils results in thermal and chemical instability, immiscibility with hydrocarbon fuels and low heating values compared with hydrocarbon fuels. As, transesterification reaction is diffusion controlled, these limitations will be overcome by using the catalyst supports such as SBA-15, SBA-16 and KIT-6 which are mesoporous with interconnecting pores. The acidity, chemical stability of heteropolyacids (HPA) and their hydrophobic character are expected to promote the preferential adsorption of oily hydrophobic species on the catalyst surface to avoid deactivation of the catalyst. Hydrodeoxygenation of vegetable oils will remove oxygen to enhance their cetane number, oxidative stability, heating value, miscibility in conventional fuel and the production of straight-chain hydrocarbons which have superior ignition quality in diesel engines. The use of non-sulphided catalysts such as Ni/Co-promoted Mo nitrides and carbides on Al2O3 for the production of renewable transportation fuels from vegetable oils has an attractive environmental incentive. Such novel catalysts will be developed and finetuned to produce high quality green diesels which meet the ASTM standards. Subsequently a detailed life cycle analysis for both the routes will be conducted. The derived biofuels will be evaluated for their combustion properties such as heating value, cetane number and oxidative stability.