Alternative Energy

Glycerol is a viable renewable feedstock that has emerged as a consequence of triglyceride conversion to biodiesel. In addition to glycerol conversion to commodity chemicals such as propylene glycol and epichlorohydrin, formation of higher-value specialty chemical products such as 1,3-...

Because of conventional oil being-exhausted and its increasing price, the technologies to use unconventional oil and low value crude residues, which have not been fully exploited, are receiving more and more interest. Unconventional oil contains a lot of asphaltene which hinders utilizability of...

Hot water extraction of bitumen from oil sands has been commercially applied for decades. The extraction process is greatly aided by the addition of caustics and other reagents, which adversely impact handling and disposal of byproducts at process end. Recent effort of increasing energy efficiency...

Oil sands operations in Alberta are poised to experience significant growth over the next number of years. Production of 1.31 million bbl/day of synthetic crude oil and bitumen blends from oil sands in 2008 is projected to increase to over 3 million bbl/day by 2018. This guarantees a large output...

The US Air Force has committed to an alternative aviation-fuel initiative to implement a roadmap for testing and certifying alternative fuel components including biomass-derived alternatives produced from non-food plants, animal fats, and algae, as well as synthetic fuel components derived from...

Hydrolysis of sodium borohydride (NaBH 4 ) over metal catalyst is being accepted as a potential technology to deliver H 2 for portable fuel cells. However, unresolved issues such as minimizing the amount of water and nature of hydration by-product limit the hydrogen storage capacities of NaBH 4 ...

Abstract A fixed-bed compact heat exchange reactor (CHER) was designed and constructed for by Chart Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reaction. This reactor contained a plate-fin structure with layers of mini-channels (channels having ~5 mm equivalent diameter) containing a total of 80 g of cobalt based...

Mineral acids have been used effectively for the pretreatment of cellulosic biomass to improve sugar recovery and promote its conversion to ethanol; however, substantial capital investment is required to enable separation of the acid, and corrosion-resistant materials are necessary. Disposal and...

Some processes aimed to biofuels production, use lignocellulosic wastes as feedstocks for fermentative conversion. If this is the case, pretreatment is required to make these resources fully digestible. Among a wide range of pretreatment options, this study focuses and compares oxidative-alkaline...

Three classes of nonfouling substances, poly[poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate] (POEM), poly(sulfobetaine methacrylate) (PSBMA), and perfluoroalkyl tagged poly(ethylene glycol) surfactants (fPEG), were covalently tethered onto the surface of Anopore TM membranes (nominal pore size 0.2...