INNISFAIL – Deep Sky Labs is aiming to soon start construction on its $50 million carbon removal facility in Innisfail amidst a steady stream of questions from the public about the promised benefits, as well as potential risks.
The latter has been advanced loudly by a small group of opponents, underscored at a town council meeting on Aug. 12 that forced the unprecedented early adjournment of proceedings.
Since then, the Town of Innisfail has taken measures through its Council Procedure Bylaw and the presence of Innisfail RCMP and local peace officers to ensure civility and order at future meetings, including the planned Deep Sky-hosted open houses on Sept. 18 and 19.
Deep Sky, a Quebec-based company, aims to educate citizens on the carbon removal project on a five-acre lot at the town’s Southwest Industrial Park, as well as the storage processes for the project’s planned annual removal of 3,000 tonnes a year of carbon dioxide (CO2); considered tiny by industry standards.
Pilot facility
Phil De Luna is from Toronto and holds a PhD in materials science and is an expert on carbon removal.
He is Deep Sky’s chief carbon scientist and head of engineering and has been working with Town of Innisfail staff this summer preparing the company’s development application and going over site plans for the project.
“It's really a pilot facility,” said De Luna, whose company is tasked to test up to 10 CO2 direct air capture technologies simultaneously at the Innisfail site. “The amount of CO2 we're removing from the atmosphere, while important to prove out these processes, is a drop in the bucket in what we actually want to get to in the future in terms of a commercial facility, or what we need to in general as an industry, but it's the first step in a very long journey that we have to take.”
Carbon removal
De Luna said the first step in the carbon removal process is done with big fans that moves air through a filter.
Inside the filter there is a material that captures the CO2 that binds the molecule and allows the other parts of the air, such as oxygen and nitrogen, to flow through.
The second step involves “squeezing” the CO2 out of the filter by electricity or by steam. It is then compressed, cooled and turned into a liquid.
There are zero emissions during this process, said De Luna.
“It’s the exact opposite,” he said. “We are taking emissions out of the air and then the only thing that comes out is cleaner air; air that has less CO2 in it.
“The atmosphere is incredibly good at mixing,” added De Luna. “So, there's actually zero chance of any localized dispersion or reduction of carbon dioxide that would impact residents within the area.”
Transporting and storing CO2
De Luna said the process of transporting CO2 is a commonly used process within the industry that has happened since the “dawn of a Coca Cola.”
He added the tank is much like a giant cylinder holding between 20 to 30 tons of CO2 being transported by a Super B semi truck.
“It’s the exact same process the food and beverage industry use to ship CO2 around for breweries and for soda,” said De Luna.
Greg Maidment is the company’s director of subsurface with more than 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.
He was born and raised in Calgary and is Deep Sky’s expert on underground storage for the captured carbon..
Maidment said transporting CO2 to storage is a very similar technology to any of the oil and gas storage units seen driving up and down Highway 2.
“We’ve been using it for decades,” said Maidment.
And once the CO2 has arrived at its storage destination in in the Morinville area of Sturgeon County, about 225 kilometres north of Innisfail, it will be put safely in the ground, as it’s been in Alberta for more than a half century.
“We've been injecting CO2 in Alberta’s underground since 1971. I think this is something that Alberta is really good at,” said Maidment. “We've got phenomenal regulations and great geological understanding of everything that's happening here.
“The province has had the foresight to build the regulations around CO2 storage. Because we have the expertise and the know-how we've been doing it forever, which is awesome.”
The captured CO2 in the giant cylinder tanks transported by Super B semi trucks is not just shoved in the ground and then covered over by a dozer.
Today’s process is more sophisticated, deeper and considered by the industry, including Deep Sky, far safer.
Deep saline aquifers
In this modern-day world of ultra-high tech processes, CO2 storage is in deep saline aquifers, defined as geological formations consisting of water-permeable rocks that are saturated with salt water, called brine.
All subsurface CO2 storage is in fact regulated by the Alberta Energy Regulator.
“It's a porous rock that's filled with salty water, and we inject the CO2 into these salty, wet formations, and it's permanently held there and stored forever,” said Maidment, noting the regulations in Alberta stipulate that CO2 storage has to be deeper than one kilometre.
He said what Deep Sky is looking for, as well as the 26 different CO2 storage hubs that already exist in Alberta, is either a sandstone or carbonate rock formation that has the necessary porosity, much like a salty, wet sponge.
“And then we force the CO2 into it,” said Maidment. “The water and the CO2 mix and bind together, and the pressure of the rocks over top are holding the CO2 in that wet formation.”
And a question already advanced by some, including those for the Innisfail project, is whether there is a possibility of a catastrophe for the environment and for citizens living and working above the saline aquifers.
“If that was a possibility we would have oil and gas leaking up to the surface everywhere. We're looking for the same types of rocks using the same process,” said Maidment. “The process of injecting the CO2 and storing the CO2 is the same process that's already holding all the oil and gas down there, keeping it under our feet.
“We're just returning the CO2 back to where most of our human emissions have come from,” he added. “It can't come to surface because of the geological processes we're using, the same that holds the oil and gas there in place.”
Not ‘rocket science’
De Luna is confident of Deep Sky’s plan to move forward with the pilot facility in Innisfail and the many CO2 direct air capture technologies he and his staff will be testing.
“This isn't rocket science or fusion. The actual core technology is stuff that you were pulling from other industries, like equipment from the cement industry, or from the mining industry, or from the water treatment facilities,” said De Luna. “All these companies and these different technologies are finding new ways to combine existing industrial equipment to separate CO2 from the air, which is not exotic.
“It's not dangerous. It’s innovative in the sense that it's a process innovation,” he added. “But we're not splitting atoms. We're not doing anything nuclear.”
“It’s really tried and true industrial processes that are combined in a new way.”
And the goal for Deep Sky is to make money and to get to commercial facilities running as quickly as possible, hopefully within three to five years, where it can generate revenue that is sustainable and has a profit.
“But like every startup, you have to start somewhere and right now we're funding Deep Sky Labs in this facility primarily through venture capital equity,” said De Luna. “We have to prove out our product.
“Our product is removing CO2 from the air and then generating a carbon credit that we sell to customers; large corporations that have climate emission reduction goals that are difficult or possible for them to meet just by themselves. That is our business model,” he added.
“I have faith in the people of Innisfail and the people across Alberta that as soon as they understand and learn more, and the more we have our town halls on what we are doing, that the support will only continue to increase.”
