INNISFAIL – Since last fall, longtime Innisfailian Thomas Morton has read with interest the news about Deep Sky’s ambitious plan to build the world’s first carbon removal innovation and commercialization centre.
For more than 40 years Morton has worked in the oil and gas industry.
His work included a focus on power engineering. He started out as a plant operator and spent 15 years operating large oil and gas facilities.
Morton was promoted to field supervisor in charge of oil and gas operations.
And then for 10 years he specialized in the commissioning and startup of new oil and gas facilities.
Morton was intrigued with Deep Sky’s mission of testing up to 10 new technologies for carbon capture and removal at the Montreal-based company’s soon to be operational $50 million facility at Innisfail’s westside Southwest Industrial Park.
This is cutting edge technology but there were similarities.
“There's a compressor there, there's a refrigeration skid there, there's water treatment skid there, tanks and then the required chemicals to make everything work within the parameters that it's set up for,” said Morton. “So, that is absolutely similar to oil and gas production.
“Now, when it comes to the actual production of the CO2, that's where things start to differ,” he added. “But again, even from that perspective, it's still an industrial process that we're using to extract the carbon from the atmosphere.”
He called Deep Sky. There was soon an interview process.
Morton was hired to be the first facility operator at Deep Sky’s Innisfail facility.
His first day on the job was Feb. 18.
“I will have the care and control of the facility when it's operating, so that that onus falls upon me to operate it safely and effectively and making the operation as successful as I possibly can,” said Morton of his role, which will include transportation and storage of the collected CO2.
“I have that background, and we will be putting it down a well and permanently storing it in that way. I'm basically involved from the front to the back,” he said, adding his first month on the job has been “fantastic.
“I've been given a lot of leeway when it comes to the work that I'm doing and getting prepared to get the facility up and running, because there's a lot of things that need to happen prior to that startup occurring,” he said. “I'm quite happy with the way things are going, and the management here has been very kind to me. It's been a really positive environment and a really positive experience so far.”
Site construction
Deep Sky’s groundbreaking carbon removal testing project in town is now about 50 per cent complete and is expected to be operational this summer, possibly as early as July.
Construction on the six-acre site began last September, with several regional contractors hired for the job, including the Penhold office of Bunch Projects, a leading western Canadian facility and construction company serving the oil and gas industry.
“They (Bunch) are our main contractor for this site,” said Alexandra Petre, Deep Sky’s vice-president of operations, who is Morton’s boss and responsible for getting the Innisfail facility ready for operations.
She said there's upwards of 80 construction workers at the site on a daily basis.
“We are about 50 per cent of the way through construction, with a view to finish construction in April and then focus on commissioning of all of the equipment and then start-up in the summer.”
Petre said the company is hoping to have its first shipment of 27 tons of CO2 delivered in August to an underground storage facility north of Edmonton.
On March 19 she gave the Albertan a tour of the construction site, which has changed dramatically since last fall.
A fence now lines the site. There is a circular road around plant operations, as well as another in the middle for access.
There is a main structure called the Balance of Plant Building. It plays a big part in the carbon removal process.
It has a prominent Deep Sky logo that can been seen from the west by motorists on Highway 54.
There are direct air capture (DAC) units being built, each with different capacities but all created to capture CO2 from the atmosphere.
A total of four DAC units are planned to be built by the time the plant becomes operational this summer, and another four in the fall.
And there are numerous pipe racks at the site to transport utilities - such as water, electricity, and clean air - required for different direct air capture systems, as well as bringing back CO2 to the Balance of Plant building.
Despite some controversy about CO2 removal the amount taken from the atmosphere by Deep Sky is miniscule.
“This would take 3,000 tons of CO2 from the air. The best way to describe that is the equivalent about 200 less cars driving on the road in a year in a year,” said Petre. “It is testing technology and there is no risk associated with the test.”
First in the world
Innisfail’s Deep Sky carbon capture test facility is attracting significant interest, and not just in Innisfail, Alberta and the rest of Canada but internationally.
Teams from various parts of the world that built facility machinery come to the site to run tests for the Innisfail facility, which is now, according to Petre, “definitely” the first one in the world to be testing more than one technology for carbon removal.
“We have teams from the U.K., from the Netherlands and teams from Germany coming to calibrate their machinery and make it work according to the best way possible,” said Petre, adding there have also been delegations from Japan and Spain. “They're also coming and supporting the local economy.
“We have a very nice little tour that we take them on,” she added. “We go to the facility, we go to the brewery, we go to the coffee shops, and yes, a lot of people are coming to Innisfail for this.”
What’s more is that many of the 80 daily on-site workers are also visiting Innisfail shops and amenities. Some have even used hotels or even rented suites.
And when the facility becomes fully operational it will be staffed by 10 full-time employees working at the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“We're actively hiring people from the area, and we've had a lot of interest from Innisfail, Bowden, Penhold and Red Deer,” said Petre.
And they will soon have a nice two-storey, 3,000 sq.-ft. administration building on site to work from.
“It will have a roof terrace and we can look at all of the units from the roof,” she said, adding there will also be a parking lot for workers and visitors.
And finally, there will be a grand opening of the facility this summer.
The date has not yet been set but it will be a celebration for the company, modern technology, and community.
“If we just strip down what it's doing, it's a technology innovation centre,” said Petre. “Innovating with technology is good for us. It's good for jobs. It's good for repurposing a lot of skills from the energy industry.”
