A unique business relationship is helping put some fizz into a project to control greenhouse gas emissions.

A chemical plant near Edmonton has started to pipe its excess carbon dioxide emissions to a nearby gas-processing facility for conversion into the stuff that makes beer bubbly and soft drinks fizzle – carbonation.

The idea was uncapped by Shell Chemicals, a division of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, when it opened its styrene plant a year ago in Scotford, 35 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. The plant would normally produce more than 62,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year, venting it directly into the air as a waste product.

But Shell Chemicals decided to team up with Air Liquide, a company which separates and purifies gases that was building its own plant adjacent to the Shell Chemicals facility. The two companies now have a unique symbiotic relationship.

Photo courtesy Shell Canada Ltd.
The Shell Chemicals plant at Scotford pipes emissions next door for processing.

Early this past summer, Shell began shipping over its carbon dioxide waste to Air Liquide through a low-pressure pipeline. That company in turn provides their excess oxygen and nitrogen for Shell Chemicals products including styrene, used in making plastics and rubber products, and ethylene glycol, used in products such as antifreeze and in creating polyester fibres.

A cogeneration unit run by Air Liquide provides Shell Chemicals with a reliable supply of steam and electricity, allowing the company to save on energy costs. Shell has also partnered with Air Liquide in the U.S. to build and run cogeneration units for operations at its petrochemical complex in Geismar, Louisiana.

“There’s a lot of synergies,” agrees John Craig, plant manager for Air Liquide at Scotford. “We’re very tied together. They can’t make their product without oxygen. And unless they make their product, we don’t get the C02. To make our product, we need a lot of electricity, and to make their product, they need a lot of steam. So the co-gen (cogeneration unit) provides that electricity and steam.”

Air Liquide takes the moisture-laden carbon dioxide, drys it out and cleans it of hydrocarbons using a catalytic reactor.

After passing through several filters, the purified gas is then liquefied.

While most of the purified carbon dioxide is currently sold to be pumped “downhole” for enhanced oil recovery operations, Air Liquide has a number of potential clients in other sectors, including breweries, soft drink makers, and manufacturers of food-freezing operations.

Another Air Liquide plant near Medicine Hat also obtains C02 from a nearby fertilizer plant, but Craig said finding a carbon dioxide source in northern Alberta was key to bringing the finished product closer to its client base in the oilpatch.

But is it “green” energy?

“It’s kind of funny, because if you pump it downhole, the C02 is definitely not going into the (air) environment. But if you put it into products such as pop or beer, that eventually finds its way back into the atmosphere,” chuckles Craig.

Alberta produces about 25 per cent of Canada’s industrial greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.

Karl Blonski, manager of health, safety, environment and quality at the Shell Chemicals plant, says it’s a win-win situation for the companies in both reducing direct emissions by converting a waste product into a usable commodity for industry and the consumer, and finding cheap, efficiently produced electricity.

It’s expected that up to 60 per cent of the C02 emissions produced by the chemical plant will be recycled this way.

Craig says Air Liquide hopes to use its new source of fizz from the Scotford plant to help put the pop in soft drinks.

“That’s the plan,” he adds. “But before you introduce it into something like a food product, you want a lot of running history. And that’s what we’re doing right now.”

Meanwhile, the Shell refinery adjacent to the Scotford chemical plant is also examining ways to cut emissions, says Shell Canada Ltd. public affairs manager Janet Rowley.

Process heaters account for a significant portion of the energy consumed and C02 emissions generated at the plant, with the heaters burning refinery fuel gas and natural gas to heat hydrocarbon streams to the high temperatures required for the refining reactions to take place.

Last year, Shell staff adjusted temperature profiles on the reactors to help reduce the energy required to reheat the process, and in turn cut the load by 15 per cent during a trial period.

The company is now examining the method and how to use the technique to achieve optimum results.