New process drives energy costs out of plastics production
Quantiam Technologies of Edmonton, backed by a $10 million public-private investment, has started a project to demonstrate a dramatically more efficient way of manufacturing olefins, the most widely produced group of petrochemicals in the world.
Nanotechnology played a role here in developing “catalytic” coatings that allow for the manufacturing of olefins at lower temperatures, meaning less requirement for heat energy and less burning of fossil fuels through conventional hydrocarbon steam cracking.
This conventional production of olefins — used in everything from plastics to lubricants to antifreeze — is energy intensive, resulting in more than $10 billion a year in energy costs and significant release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Quantiam claims its technology can lower energy costs by up to 20 per cent.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada invested $1.45 million toward the project.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca