A new centre aimed at turning carbon dioxide into useful products officially opened in Calgary on Friday.
The Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre (ACCTC) is located next to the Shepard Energy Centre in southeast Calgary. Users of the centre will test carbon capture and conversion technologies that will be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by taking carbon dioxide and turning into value-added products. The innovators working at the ACCTC will be able to test their products using gas emissions from the Shepard Energy Centre.
“The fact that Alberta gets to host one of these facilities is fantastic,” Michelle Hiltz, business relations manager for InnoTech Alberta said. “This is a unique facility in the world.”
“When you look at the amount of carbon dioxide that comes out and the fact that we can turn this into products that we can use, we are doing two really great things; one is we are helping our climate and second we are making products that we need.”
InnoTech is an applied research subsidiary of Alberta Innovates, a provincially funded corporation with a mandate to deliver solutions for the most compelling challenges facing Albertans. Both the province and the federal government contributed $10 million to the ACCTC.
“This could have a huge impact on CO2 emissions,” Hiltz said. “Right now we are expecting it could help up to a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta.”
The range of recycled products that could be produced at the centre is varied. Teams of researchers are looking at producing everything from alcohol to building products to clothing. The first tenants at the facility will be the finalists in a US$20-million competition sponsored by the Canadian Oilsands Innovation Alliance (COISA) called XPRIZE.
“We have a world-class resource,” COISA CEO Dan Wicklum said. “We have world-class talent and now we have a world-class testing infrastructure that’s going to make that concept of carbon capture and conversion more real and allow us to for fill the potential quicker and better than anyone else in the world.”
He said the launch of ACCTC is helping turn a liability into something useful.
“The potential is there for this to be an absolute game-changer at the global level,” Wicklum said.
The conversion of carbon dioxide into value-added products is in its early stages where it still takes a substantial amount of money to make it happen but promoters say the goal is to streamline the process to make it cheaper.
“I have no doubt in my mind that we can get to the point where these products can be made in a very cost-effective manner,” Hiltz said.
After the XPRIZE competition in early 2020, the ACCTC will continue as a test centre for new technology development.
Comments