Jet fuel, or other fuels, could one day be produced from cheap animal fats – byproducts of slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants – through a process being developed at North Carolina State University (Raleigh; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-542). So far, NCSU has tested parts of the process in the laboratory, using stearic, oleic and linoleic acids as model compounds. The university has also licensed the process to Diversified Energy Corp. (Gilbert, Ariz.), which is putting together an integrated bench-scale system and plans to build a pilot plant.
In the process, called Centia, fats are hydrolyzed, then the resultant free fatty acids are phase-separated from the water. Byproduct glycerol, which goes with the water in the phase separation, would be recovered by flash distillation in a commercial plant and burned to help fuel the process. Next, the fatty acids are decarboxylated to their corresponding alkanes or alkenes, which are hydrocracked and hydroisomerized to obtain C10-C15 isoalkanes – the primary constituents of the bio-jet fuel.