Скачать или смотреть Producing jet fuel from natural oils

While electric cars may represent the future of personal transportation, and there is a lot of talk about electrifying freight trucks, there is one segment of the transportation market that will always need an energy-dense liquid fuel—aviation. So, finding a substitute for petroleum derived jet fuel is critical to the future sustainability of the aviation sector. Aviation fuels are hydrocarbons consisting of relatively long chains of carbon and hydrogen. The closest equivalent to these molecules in the biological world are the natural or vegetable oils—also known as lipids or triglycerides. In their natural form, they are not quite right for use as a fuel. But the chemistry of converting them into molecules that look exactly like aviation fuel is well understood. Such fuels have already been tested—mostly as 50% blends with their petroleum counterparts—in commercial passenger jets. Bio-based fuels have many advantages compared to petroleum based fuels including their reduced emissions of fossil CO2 and their reliance on renewable raw materials. In this project, we design a commercial (large) scale production process for converting natural oils into jet fuel. Our goal is to assess the cost and technical feasibility of such a commercial operation. The big challenge we face is coming up with a design that is both environmentally friendly and economically competitive.