CHE.03 – Real Deal Diesel

• Frederick Ciesla
• Sai Dereddy
• Trevor Kukla
• Ganesh Shetty

Overuse of fossil fuels has resulted in an increase in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. As a result, the Earth’s temperature has risen, resulting in global warming and climate change. Greenhouse gases are released when fossil fuels are burned. Global warming has shown to bring about extreme and terrible weather conditions across the world. After all the damage to the world has been done, there will be no more fuel to extract. The primary goal is to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels. The transportation industry accounts for 70% of petroleum fuel consumption in the United States, while the transportation sector accounts for at least 30% of total energy demand in the country. The goal of this project is to design a plant in North Dakoda that will produce 26 million gallons of renewable diesel per year from unfried canola oil feedstock. North Dakoda was decided due to being the United States largest grower of canola. This process uses hydrodeoxygenation reactions and isomerization reactions to reach the desired product at the end of separation. Catalytic isomerization is performed to create a mixture of branched and straight chained hydrocarbon. Products of isomerization undergo distillation and get separated into renewable diesel, renewable jet, naphtha. Renewable diesel was chosen as the main product of our plant as it can easily replace traditional fossil fuel derived diesel in engines without retrofitting and renewable diesel is mainly comprised of large hydrocarbons which are similar to the chemical framework of traditional fuels.