Low Carbon Bio + Synthetic Fuels

Improved yields and quality of novel low carbon feedstock in BC and neighboring regions

THE PROBLEM

Tall oil is a waste product of forestry pulp mills that is derived from skimming pine resin floating on top of the black liquor effluent (aka “soap”). Soap can either be a waste stream or converted into a crude tall oil (CTO) revenue stream. As crude tall oil is biogenic, the gasoline and diesel produced from this raw material are low carbon fuels that can displace conventional fossil fuels.

THE SOLUTION

Parkland has been working closely with BC pulp mills and a tall oil plant for the past 3 years to re-establish tall oil supply chains that will enable sales to the oil refining industry who need low carbon to comply with the BC low carbon fuel standard. But the current supply of crude tall oil is limited and contains contaminant levels that are often too high for refineries to readily accept in large quantities.

With funding from CICE, this project aims to solve these two problems by evaluating the potential of BC and Alberta mills to supply soap using a new soap skimming technology and optimizing the acidulation and separation efficiency of soap to tall oil conversion plants to improve yields and reduce contaminants.

PROJECT STATUS
Complete
PROJECT CATEGORY
Low Carbon Bio + Synthetic Fuels
FUNDING RECIPIENT
Parkland Refining BC Ltd.
CICE FUNDING AMOUNT
$200,000
PROJECT VALUE
$300,000
  • "CICE has been great to work with and their team showed commitment, flexibility, and sufficient expertise to understand the value of our technical problem in sourcing additional tall oil as biofuel feedstock. Because of the technical risk of the project, it would have been hard to fund this initiative without CICE’s support.”
    SERGIOS KARATZOS, PROGRAM MANAGER, LOW CARBON FEEDSTOCK DEVELOPMENT AT PARKLAND VISIT PARKLAND