Research Alberta's Gas Technology: A Case Study - The Turner Valley Gas Plant

Bonar A.(Sandy) Gow Crude oil and wheat have long represented for eastern Canadians what Alberta is all about. Rotary drilling rigs, flare pits, pump jacks, and refineries have been blended together with golden wheat fields, combines and grain elevators in the minds of easterners until they have come to be seen as the key to Alberta's economic good fortune. In this there is the usual element of truth. But natural gas, like the less glamorous cereal grains, oats and barley, remains largely in the background; it does not come to the fore with the same frequency, nor does it evoke the same vivid imagery. Similarly, the evolution of gas technology does not attract quite the same attention or interest as the technology behind the extraction of oil from tar sands or new methods of drilling at odd angles or great depths. And yet the gas processing industry has undergone a number of interesting and important changes over the years and nowhere is this more evident than at a recently declared historic site, the now closed Turner Valley Royalite #1 Gas Plant. In 1985 the plant ceased operations after some seventy-one years, and its shutdown brought to an end an era in the history of Canada's natural gas processing. Canada's oldest gas processing plant operated over all those years with a number of changes in techniques and equipment, and today it is the only plant of its kind in existence in Canada. As this article will attempt to demonstrate, the resources available to the researcher who wishes to highlight the importance of the Turner Valley plant in the history of the Alberta gas industry, and to place its technology in the mainstream of gas processing technology world wide, are in a good state of preservation, they are accessible and they are both varied and informative. THE NATURE OF NATURAL GAS What is natural gas? In short, it is a mixture of gases, principally the hydrocarbons methane and ethane, which occur beneath the surface of the earth. Its combustion accounts for over 20 percent of the energy generated from fuels throughout the world, and it is also a raw material for the making of various chemical products. Natural gas is the most volatile form of crude petroleum and it is often found together with the liquid forms because the same geological conditions are favorable for producing deposits of the liquids and the gases. Most of the component parts of the gases come from the organic matter in sediments transformed through geological processes that took place over extremely long periods of time. Other components of natural gas, however, were produced from inorganic matter by phenomena such as volcanism and radioactive disintegration. The gas that resulted from the different processes was trapped in "reservoirs" beneath the earth's crust. Producers obtain natural gas by extracting it through wells drilled into the earth. Some natural gases can be used just as they are produced in the wellhead, without any processing or refinement. Most gases, however, require processing, which generally consists of condensing the less volatile hydrocarbons, which in turn yields large quantities of liquefied petroleum gases, mainly propane and butane, and removing the less desirable constituents such as CO2 is widely distributed in nature and is a minor component of air. It is highly soluble in water and oil, especially under pressure. In water, it occurs as carbonic acid, a weak acid that can donate one or two hydrogen ions in neutralization reactions that produce bicarbonate HCO3- and carbonate CO3-2 salts or ions. CO2, being an acid in water, reacts instantly with NaOH or KOH in an alkaline water mud, forming carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Similarly, it reacts with Ca(OH)2 (lime) to form insoluble calcium carbonate and water. ">carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and other sulphur compounds. Natural gas is transported either in its naturally gaseous state by pipeline of, after being transformed into a liquid following cooling to -160 degrees Celsius, by tank truck or rail cars. The liquid form occupies approximately 1/600th of the volume of gas. THE EARLY HISTORY OF NATURAL AND MANUFACTURED GAS The use of natural gas by human beings can be traced back to China where, around about 900 B.C., we have the first written evidence of this taking place. Natural gas from free flowing wells was seeping to the surface and as early as the third century A.D. it was being employed to illuminate temples. Tenth century Beijing had streets lit with natural gas, and the Chinese were the first to build a gas pipeline and to use the gas for industrial purposes. The pipeline, made from lengths of bamboo, carried the gas from the source to the lamps at the place of consumption, while on the industrial level the heating power from gas was employed to extract salt from brine. The rest of the world lagged behind China. By accident, the Flemish chemist Jean van Helmont (1609) found that coal, heated in a sealed crucible, produced a wispy substance, which he termed gheest, or ghost, and which was now refer to as "gas". This was not natural gas but coal gas, and it was his creation that was later to help fuel some elements of the Industrial Revolution and to supply light to some European cities. Coal was something of a secret until a German, Frederic Winzer (later Frederick Windson) arrived in London around 1807, took out a patent of the manufacture of coal gas, laid down lead pipe, and proceed to light one of the city's most fashionable streets, Pall Mall. During the 1830s and 1840s gas was piped into an increasing number of well-to-do homes in European cities. The lights were crude, open flames shielded by glass lampshades, but they performed the task of providing light. Later, crude fireplaces were created to supply heat to the poorly insulated, drafty homes. Light from the coal gas appeared first in Canada in Montreal in 1836 when the first gas works went into production and in 1841 coal gas appeared on the scene in Toronto. NATURAL GAS IN THE MODERN ERA But natural gas had advantages over manufactured gas. There in no conversion cost and natural gas gives better heat for the purchase price. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, however, the technology was not available for exploiting the gas reservoirs beneath the earth's crust. A 27-foot well appeared in New York state in 1821 and from here the North American natural gas industry had its beginnings. Hollowed out logs carried the gas to Fredonia, New York, where it was put to work lighting the local streets and it seemed for a time that this city would monopolize natural gas lighting. The profit motive and American ingenuity drove the technology forward. Natural gas began to emerge as an energy source on a wider scale in the nineteenth century with the appearance of the first cable tool drilling rigs in the 1850s and the first leak proof pipe lines. Knowledge of geology improved and over the decades people skilled at locating the reservoirs, tapping them, and bringing the gas to the surface emerged as a new technical elite. On a parallel track, equally curious minds were being applied to the tasks of improving the first gas lights and stoves, making them safe enough to lure consumers away from a dependence upon coal. As the 1890s drew to a close the industry and the benefit of Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen's blue flame gas burner, and Carl A. von Welsbach's incandescent mantel for lighting homes safely and efficiently. However, a profit was, and still is, a profit, and without Samuel Clegg's gas meter the business of selling gas would not have been much of a business at all. The gas stove was also Clegg's brain child, and the fact that it extinguished it gas supply automatically when the flame was quenched made it attractive to homemakers and insurance companies alike. As the cable tool technology was perfected and the crude chisel bits hammered their way deeper and deeper into the earth (thanks to steam power), more natural gas became available. As early as 1872 the first cast iron pipeline, a staggering 5.5 miles (8.9 kilometers) in length, was laid between the field at Titusville, Pennsylvania, and the nearby town of Newton. A device for drilling down through the earth's crust, a means of transporting the gas, and a steady supply of consumers were all available by the turn of the twentieth century. However, the processing of the product had not yet commenced. Problems associated with the transporting of natural gas over low spots in the landscape led American producers in Sistervill, West Virginia (1903), to experiment with condensing gas to remove the liquid components. Later, Willaim Maybury (1905) introduced a Bessemer engine to compress "wet" (containing quantities of liquid hydrocarbons) natural gas, thus forcing it to give up it liquids. Gas processing had been born, and when the automobile came on the scene, the need to extract greater and greater quantities of the liquid fuel from natural gas, either by "chilling" or "Squeezing" became a driving force behind the birth of the industry. From, Historic Turner Valley, Cradle of Westen Canada's Oil and Gas Industry, pg 97-102