Williams Energy plans to produce more propylene from propane at Edmonton plant
By Dave Cooper, edmontonjournal.comJuly 20, 2012
Williams Energy's fractionation complex north of Edmonton.Photograph by: John Lucas, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM
EDMONTON - Williams Energy may build Canada’s first propane dehydrogeneration (PDH) facility at Redwater, an $800 million plant that could supply enough high quality propylene feedstock to justify a least one new world-scale petrochemical plant in the Industrial Heartland region.
Williams already extracts off-gases from one Suncor oilsands plant for processing at its Redwater facility, which is being expanded. It also just opened its 420-kilometre Borealis pipeline last month, a 12-inch high pressure line which transports a full range of the gases from Ft. McMurray.
“This new plant which we are exploring would be complementary to those operations,” said David Chappell, president of Williams Energy Canada.
Williams already produces propane and propylene in Redwater, and ships both by rail to the U.S. It will use its own propane to feed the new plant, plus buy a larger amount on the open market.
“Eventually, of course we hope to supply the plant entirely with our propane as we expand the off-gas business,” Chappell said Friday.
The proposed plant would produce about one billion pounds per year of polymer-grade propylene, a basic building block for the plastics industry.
Propylene is worth two to three times more than propane, and is now sought after by U.S. Gulf Coast plants. That will be its destination until an Alberta petrochemical plant is built.
Neil Shelly, executive director of the Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association, said the Williams plans are very exciting.
“This could mean a lot for our area. Propylene is the basis for an entire new family of petrochemical products from plastics, acrylic fibres, polycarbonates, resins and solvents,” he said.
“Once there is enough supply of propylene in place, there may be other opportunities for investor to build a facility to convert the materials into consumer ready products.”
Propylene is abundant in oilsands off-gas, and while valuable, it is now burned to generate heat for processing because the large oilsands plants do not have the ability to separate it. Williams pioneered the process of extracting the off-gas byproducts, and hopes to eventually have its extraction facilities at all oilsands plants.
Williams now recovers approximately 14,000 barrels per day of a natural gas liquid/olefins mixture from Fort McMurray. The mixture includes propane, propylene, butane, butylenes and condensate. The Redwater expansion underway that will enable the company to also recover 10,000 bpd of an ethane/ethylene mix.
The Williams plant near Suncor extracts the valuable natural gas liquid/olefins mixture, and returns the clean-burning natural gas to Suncor to produce heat for its operations. Williams says its off-gas processing reduces emissions of carbon dioxide in Alberta by approximately 200,000 tons each year and cuts emissions of sulphur dioxide by more than 1,700 tons each year. The new off-gas expansions will further reduce both carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emissions in Alberta.
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