March 4, 2015 Edmonton Natural Resources Canada and SDTC
The Honourable Tim Uppal, on behalf of the Honourable Greg Rickford, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, today announced funding of $20.6 million to support the development of clean technologies in Alberta. The funding was provided through Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC)’s SD Tech Fund™.
Projects:
Field Upgrading Limited — Petroleum Partial Upgrading Technology
Sector: Energy Exploration and Production
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary)/Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC funding: $5,200,000
Total project value:$18.8 million
Currently, over one million barrels per day of bitumen are blended with diluent in order to move it through pipelines throughout Canada and to the United States for upgrading and refining. Diluent is energy-intensive to produce and transport to the oilfields for use. There exists a huge opportunity to partially upgrade the bitumen in Canada before sending it on for refining. This project will demonstrate Field Upgrading’s desulfurization and upgrading technology (DSU), an innovative partial upgrading technology that uses sodium to selectively remove sulfur and other impurities from the bitumen, producing the necessary upgraded bitumen. The reactivity of the sodium eliminates the need for many conventional upgrader process units by combining sulfur removal, metals precipitation and upgrading in one step. The DSU process reduces GHG life-cycle emissions by over six percent when compared with conventional upgraders. In addition, the technology completely eliminates the emission of sulphur oxides from the upgrading process. This technology could reduce capital costs by 50 percent and operating costs by 30 percent when compared with conventional upgraders.
Consortium Members:
Field Upgrading Ltd.
Aux Sable Canada Ltd.
Verolube Inc. — Commercializing the Proprietary ReGen™ Technology for Re-refining Used Oil Into High-Quality, High-Value and Environmentally Responsible Lubricant and Fuel Products
Economic Sector: Waste Management
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary),Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC Investment: $3,994,000
Total Project Value: $12.1 million
Only 15 percent of used oil is recycled. VeroLube Inc. is commercializing its ReGen™ technology for the recycling of used oil into marketable lubricants, diesel fuel, fuel oil and other products. The technology employs an innovative combination of proprietary technologies with proven conventional processes and equipment. The project will focus on scaling up the technology and modularization, which allows for a more cost-effective simultaneous processing of multiple streams of feedstock, as a last step before commercialization. Through the ReGen™ recycling process, 78 percent less energy will be used to produce new oil, while CO2 emissions will be reduced by nearly 80 percent.
Consortium Members:
VeroLube Inc.
Parkland Fuel Corporation
The Prasino Group Canada Ltd.
Steeper Energy Canada Ltd. — Hydrofaction™ CPS
Economic Sector: Energy Exploration and Production
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change/Clean Water
SDTC Investment: $3,000,000
Total Project Value: $10.5 million
Of the 3.2 million barrels a day produced by Canada’s oil industry, 1.7 million barrels are heavy oil. This heavy oil does not flow easily within the pipelines designed to transport it, so operators thin it out using a product called a diluent. Steeper Energy Canada’s Hydrofaction™ technology is a catalytic hydrothermal process that transforms biomass feedstock such as forestry or agricultural residues into synthetic bio-crude oil, which can then be used as a renewable diluent. This measure reduces the use and associated costs of imported diluent while improving Canada's overall energy industry carbon footprint; furthermore, the synthetic bio-crude oil can be refined to drop-in fuels such as diesel and jet fuel using existing North American refinery infrastructure.
Consortium Members:
Steeper Energy Canada Ltd.
Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
Fortistar LLC
Verdant Global — Indoor Urban Farm
Economic Sector: Agriculture
Environmental Benefits: Clean Air/Clean Water/Clean Soil
SDTC Investment: $2,500,000
Total Project Value: $7.6 million
Imagine a fresh strawberry, fully ripened and sweet — and locally grown in Canada in February. It could happen, thanks to an integrated indoor food-growing system enabling sustainable, year-round, controlled-atmosphere agriculture at a commercial scale in urban centres. Verdant Global has designed a system that uses water mist (aeroponics), low-energy lighting and high-density tray-and-trough configurations, all adapted to fit in a standard urban industrial building. The process is specifically designed to optimize the growth of a variety of plants without sunlight while handling the needs of multiple crops on various crop cycles. These indoor urban farms will cost less to build than a greenhouse and use less energy to operate. The system avoids the need to transport fruits and vegetables hundreds of kilometres and the related GHG emissions.
Consortium Members:
Verdant Global
B M Potter Consultants Ltd.
Sunterra Quality Foods Inc.
Tava/Codema Systems Group
Hifi Engineering — Pipeline Monitoring Using High-Fidelity Sensors
Economic Sector: Energy Exploration and Production
Environmental Benefits: Clean Water/Clean Soil
SDTC Investment: $2,000,000
Total Project Value: $5.9 million
In Canada, nearly 73,000 kilometres of oil and gas pipeline move approximately one billion barrels of product per year. A key challenge facing pipeline operators is the ability to accurately and quickly identify low-volume fluid leaks, allowing them to repair those leaks and prevent spills. Hifi Engineering will demonstrate a continuous monitoring system for oil pipelines that will quickly identify and characterize low-level leaks in new and existing pipe, allowing operators to act before potential spills are released into the surrounding environment. Using specially designed fiber optic cables installed within or beside pipelines, Hifi will monitor several kilometres of pipeline at a time on a continuous basis, initially focusing market rollout to environmentally sensitive or populated areas.
Consortium Members:
Hifi Engineering Inc.
Enbridge Inc.
Questor Technology Inc. — HeatQuest
Sector: Power Generation
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change (primary)/Clean Air (co-benefit)
SDTC funding: $1,978,000
Total project value: $5.9 million
Industrial plants, including petroleum refineries, natural gas processing plants and chemical plants, burn off flammable waste gases that are produced by everyday operations. Called natural gas flaring, this process burns off approximately 140 billion m3/yr. globally — an amount equivalent to Canada’s total gas production. This project will produce a technology, called HeatQuest, that puts that flared gas to good use: producing heat and energy. HeatQuest will capture waste heat from incinerators and other heat sources using high-efficiency heat exchangers and thermal conversion devices that convert heat to electricity.
Consortium Members
Questor Technology Inc. (QTI)
University of Toronto
Journey Energy
ClearPower
Pure Technologies Ltd. — Innovative and Cost-Effective In-Line Leak Detection Tool for Gas Pipelines
Economic Sector: Energy Exploration and Production
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change
SDTC Investment: $1,000,000
Total Project Value: $3 million
Within existing pipelines in Canada and the United States, small leaks can grow and lead to pipeline ruptures, causing damage to the environment. The SmartBall is a high-resolution, un-tethered, free-swimming acoustic in-line leak detection tool. Pure Technologies has proven the effectiveness of the SmartBall for water and oil pipelines. This project adapts existing technology to gas pipelines by incorporating the ability to detect the acoustic signatures of gas leaks. The tool reports back to the user, allowing for quick detection of the location of the leak and therefore quick remediation.
Consortium Members:
Pure Technologies
Alliance Pipeline Ltd
Plains Midstream Canada
City of Calgary
Luxmux Technology Corp. — Steam Quality Optimization in Thermally Enhanced Heavy Oil Recovery
Economic Sector: Energy Exploration and Production
Environmental Benefits: Climate Change/Clean Air/Clean Water
SDTC Investment: $980,350
Total Project Value: $3 million
Most of the oil in Canada’s oil sands is recoverable using specialized thermal techniques such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), which uses steam to soften the oil underground and separate it from the sand. Ensuring that steam generators are operating efficiently is crucial to efficient and environmentally responsible operations. One way to determine operating performance is to monitor steam quality and flow rates. Luxmux and Agar will be the first companies to demonstrate and market a novel chip technology that will enable a high level of precision monitoring. Their Silicon Nano-photonic Fourier Transform Near-Infrared Spectrometer On-Chip (Nano-Spec™ FTNIR Chip) technology is a complete process-measurement solution that could increase the quality of steam by up to four percent on once-through steam generator (OTSG) boilers, while avoiding tube scaling, which results in tube overheating and tube rupture. The solution will assist heavy-oil producers to increase production, decrease operating costs, reduce GHG emissions and decrease water consumption.
Consortium Members:
Luxmux Technology Corporation
Agar Canada
Cenovus Energy
