INNOVATION July-August 2015

2014 ¢

2015 PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

Water Resource Hub The multi-discipline oil and gas engineering firm, Solaris-MCI, recently completed the first phase of a Water Resource Hub (WRH) project for Encana Corporation. The WRH facility supports Encana’s operations near Dawson Creek. By accessing otherwise unusable saline water from a subsurface aquifer, the WRH has reduced Encana’s reliance on surface water for its operations in the area. Designed for a maximum intake of 50,000 barrels per day, the facility functions as a recycle and reuse loop by blending saline water with water returned from hydraulic fracturing. This further reduces surface water use above and beyond the saline water sourced from up to 20 source wells. In addition, transport of water via pipeline to the WRH is estimated to cut down on 90 truckloads per day for water hauling. Project team: Alanna Goobie EIT; Chel Tessarolo, PMP; Clement Ng, P.Eng.; Dusty Moi, P.Eng.; Randy Bohl, P.Eng.; Terence Portugal, P.Eng.

Permanent Canal Closures and Pumps Project, New Orleans Devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which left 80% of New Orleans flooded, the US Army Corps of Engineers embarked on a $14.6 billion Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System to repair the damage and improve resiliency for the City of New Orleans. The last component of this major infrastructure investment is this $615 million Permanent Canal Closures and Pumps Project, where Stantec is currently working with PCCP Constructors JV serving as the lead design engineer and architect. The project consists of the design of three primary drainage pumping stations and outfall canal closure structures in the City of New Orleans. The combined pumps from all three site pump stations have a cumulative capacity of 24,300 cubic feet per second—fast enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in less than four seconds. The PCCP project provides long-term measures to reduce the risk from hurricane storm damage. Photo: PCCP Constructors, a Joint Venture.

Direct Air Capture Deep cuts to CO 2 emissions are essential to avoid climate change. But many people aren’t aware that more than half those emissions don’t come from large factories and power plants and, as a result, can be challenging to eliminate at source. Carbon Engineering is seeking to scrub CO 2 directly from ambient air through “direct air capture,” an environmentally-motivated technology, and has progressed through early R&D, process engineering, and lab testing of this challenging new technology. CE and its project partners are now building a fully end- to-end demonstration plant in Squamish to show their design can scrub CO 2 from ambient air and produce a pure compressed CO 2 stream that can be stored underground or used industrially. The Squamish demo

plant is set to run for several months this year, during which CE’s engineers will collect valuable performance data that will be used to further refine and optimize the design.

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