Licensed Technologies

CanmetENERGY offers Canadian and international companies and organizations opportunities to invest in the development and deployment of clean energy technologies.

Below you will find a list of opportunities to license our technologies and to join other private sector companies in consortia research.

When used oils such as motor oil and lubricants are thermally cracked for reprocessing they produce unstable, foul-smelling gas oil with limited potential for further use. The ROBYS^TM process purifies and stabilizes reprocessed used oils that would otherwise go to waste, producing gas oil that:

• meets regulatory and consumer colour criteria
• is not odorous
• minimizes the formation of gums and tars during storage, and
• has reduced sulphur, nitrogen, and chlorine contents.

The ROBYS^TM Process

The ROBYS^TM process was developed in collaboration with Aldwich Canada and the first commercial ROBYS^TM plant was successfully installed in Malaysia in 2005. For a fee, we will test used oils submitted by clients for their suitability for the ROBYS^TM process.

CanmetENERGY SUPERCETANE^TM

CanmetENERGY SUPERCETANE^TM technology converts a wide variety of triglyceride-containing feedstocks including vegetable oils, yellow greases, animal fats, and tall oil, into a stable, high-cetane (~100) diesel fuel blending stock with low sulphur content (less than 10 ppm). High free fatty acid feedstocks are easily processed with the SUPERCETANE^TM Technology. The hydrotreating process generates water, burner gas, and a hydrocarbon liquid that is further distilled into naphtha, waxy residues, and a middle distillate (SUPERCETANE^TM). Yields of SUPERCETANE^TM from this efficient process are 70–80% by weight and 85–93% by volume.

SUPERCETANE^TM has multiple environmental advantages: lower diesel exhaust emissions of hydrocarbons, NOX, particulates, and carbon monoxide; reduced greenhouse gas emissions over its complete life cycle; and improvement in fuel economy by up to 8%. SUPERCETANE^TM is very stable, fully compatible with petroleum-derived diesel fuels at all concentrations, and has a better ignition quality (higher cetane number) than transesterification products (biodiesel).

Potential commercial applications of SUPERCETANE^TM centre on its ability to increase the ignition quality of low-cetane middle distillates, to reduce the NO_X emissions of biodiesel blends, to increase the responsiveness of diesel fuels, and to produce renewable normal paraffins for petrochemical applications. CanmetENERGY has available a 0.2 barrel/day process development unit for process optimization and further research.

The AVRO Diesel^TM process

The AVRO Diesel^TM process converts recovered cooking greases, animal fats, cooking oils, and restaurant residues into a clean, high-cetane diesel fuel. In North America, these wastes amount to 6 – 8 kg/person/year and are currently sent to landfills at a cost of $30–$60/tonne. Recovery of these wastes in Canada alone could produce 200 million L/year of clean diesel fuel worth an estimated $150 million Canadian.

Existing conventional bio-diesel processes require clean and often expensive ($650–$800/tonne) feedstocks and have poor cold flow properties. The AVRO Diesel^TM process combines mild thermal cracking with esterification to yield a 50%-50% mixture of hydrocarbons and methyl-esters suitable for diesel-fuel blending and with improved cold flow properties.

CanmetENERGY is continuously developing new clean energy technologies, many of which are available for licensing and commercialization.