Calgary Alberta – November 14, 2017 – Steeper Energy Canada Ltd., a Danish-Canadian clean-fuel company, and MITACS will support continued development of the upgrading of Hydrofaction™ Oil into drop-in biofuels. The $450,000 collaboration will be carried out at the University of Calgary and University of Alberta from December 2017 to November 2019.

The Project’s objective is to continue the upgrading work executed in the previous MITACS Converge project with a larger focus on more challenging biocrude oils such as heavy fractions, high viscosity, high nitrogen, high ash renewable crude oils that are produced from feedstocks such as “feed gate residues” in the form of manures, biosludges and organics from municipal waste. The performance objective remains to optimize and scale up the upgrading of Hydrofaction™ Renewable Crude Oil to blendstocks for transport fuels. The main challenge in upgrading Hydrofaction™ renewable crude Oil from such sources is not only the oxygen content of the oil but also the high viscosity, sulfur, and inorganic contaminants. The collaboration is focused on hydrotreating as well as hydrogenation in conjunction with Catalytic Steam Cracking. The direct conversion to renewable diesel will enable resource owners such as forest industry companies to close the carbon cycle of their operations by sourcing renewable diesel for their operations from their own organic residuals.

Additional information on the MITACS collaboration is available at https://www.mitacs.ca/en/projects?field_province=All&field_discipline_taxonomy=All&field_sector_taxonomy=All&field_university_taxonomy=All&field_program_taxonomoy=All&field_partner_taxonomy=8066&search_api_language=All&search_api_views_fulltext.