More than 52,000 visitors took in the 2002 Global Petroleum Show last week in Calgary.

Organizers predict that more than $12 billion worth of sales will be generated as the result of the three-day event, while the city’s economy received a boost of $20-$25 million.

This year’s show “was a tremendous success – in size, scope and the quality of those participating,” says Justin O’Connor, marketing manager for dmg world media, the show’s producer.

I spent an afternoon at Stampede Park, to see if the trade show’s more than 1,400 exhibitors from 80 countries reflected the theme of this year’s accompanying Canadian International Petroleum Conference, which was Sustainable Growth: Strategy, People and Technology.

Sure enough, dozens of companies displayed their environmental wares. Here are just a few home-grown examples, chosen at random:

* Gridlink Power Systems Ltd., an EnSource company in Calgary, distributes natural gas-fired turbines that turn the gas from polluting oilfield flaring into useful heat and power.

Business manager Rick Sutton showed me a 4,500-horsepower turbine that’s the same as those used in C-130 Hercules aircraft.

When coupled to a natural gas-processing plant, the turbine burns non-commercial waste gas – including sour gas – that the plant would otherwise emit to the air.

At the same time, the turbine generates about three megawatts of electricity that can be used to either power the gas plant or be sold into the electrical grid. Heat from the turbine’s operation is captured and distributed to warm the plant and associated facilities.

Co-generation – producing both heat and electricity – “is a very efficient use of the gas,” Sutton said. “In terms of an environmental impact, it’s a clean use of the fuel.”

Gridlink offers turbines for lease or sale that range from 30-kilowatt micro-units to “monster machines” that can put out up to 90 megawatts of power. The 10-MW unit costs about $2.5 million, but would pay for itself within 22 months if running at full capacity, Sutton said.

* Tanks-A-Lot Ltd. has a catchy name and a cost-effective solution for looking after sewage at remote construction camps.

The Edmonton-based company makes sewage-treatment plants that can be hauled by tractor-trailer to the construction site and left to take care of business. The large, modular tanks are insulated and heated to operate year-round, said sales manager Bill Butler.

Solid waste collects in the tank and is pumped out when necessary and hauled away for safe disposal. Liquid waste – exposed to air and sunlight in the open-topped tank – is naturally broken down through aeration. Treated wastewater is clean enough and meets all environmental regulations to be simply pumped into the forest, Butler said.

The system is cheaper than the traditional method of collecting all of a camp’s sewage in holding tanks and trucking it away for disposal, he noted.

* UNOTEC (Unique Oilfield Technology Services) of Calgary offers a way to treat, onsite, waste fluids that result from drilling oil wells.

The technology eliminates the traditional method of pumping waste drilling fluids into a pit dug on the well lease, and from there into tanker-trucks to be hauled away and disposed of in a landfill.

“You’re transforming your waste into something you’re detoxifying, so you can use it as an organic material to reclaim your site,” said Ari Laurell, technical account manager.

Waste drilling fluid is collected in large tanks that separate the fluid from rock chips and other particles coming out of the wellhole.

Fluid is then recycled back to the drilling process, saving on the costs of the drilling operation. Leftover oily waste, along with canola meal and wood chips, is fed into a mixing unit to produce a consistently mixed material, Laurell explained.

The canola meal and wood chips absorb the oil, preventing it from leaching offsite when the treated material is spread on the ground and left to naturally break down over time.

UNOTEC’s customers include some major oil and gas corporations, including BP, EnCana, Husky Energy and Burlington Resources.

* Nelson Environmental Remediation Ltd., based in Spruce Grove and with a Calgary marketing office, specializes in treating subsurface soils contaminated by hydrocarbons.

The company’s two-stage process first heats the soil to release the hydrocarbons. This produces contaminated dust, and the dust is removed with particle-trapping filters in a “baghouse.”

What’s left are the hydrocarbons, which are then destroyed in a high-temperature after-burner.

“What goes up in the air is no ‘uglies,’ ” noted business development representative Art Garland. “It’s nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapour.”

Treated soil “is cleaner than what goes into schoolyards,” he added. It can be put back onsite, used in road surfacing, berm building or landscaping.

The technology is more environmentally friendly than the traditional method of hauling contaminated soil to a landfill, Garland said. It’s also cost-competitive with other treatment techniques, such as landfarming (spreading the soil on the land) and bioremediation (adding microbes to naturally break down the hydrocarbons).

Nelson Environmental is working near Hardisty on its biggest-ever project, cleaning up 75,000 tonnes of soil contaminated by an accidental oil pipeline rupture.