“It opens up a whole other section of manufacturing potential and possibilities here,”
HEARTLAND PETROCHEMICAL COMPLEX
OPENING NEW DOORS FOR RECYCLABLE CANADIAN PLASTIC.
by Deborah Jaremko
C ontainers, plates, dishwasher pods, carpets, luggage, automotive plastics, medical equipment, cold weather clothing, beach footwear, flooring. These are just a few of the nearly endless every day products that are made with a recyclable plastic called polypropylene. Now they can be made with supply from Canada. After more than a decade of development and investment, Inter Pipeline Ltd.’s Heartland Pet- rochemical Complex near Edmonton is now in full operation producing polypropylene directly from locally sourced propane. Brendan Curley, the company’s vice-president of petrochemical operations, is excited about the opportunities this brings to expand Canada’s economy. “It opens up a whole other section of manufac- turing potential and possibilities here,” he says. “It takes us one step further down that integrat- ed value chain in terms of taking by-products of oil and gas and turning them into something,
and to be more than just a producer that takes our raw materials and exports them.” Petrochemical production and plastic manufac- turing contributed a combined $93.6 billion to Canada’s economy and directly employed nearly 175,000 people in 2021, according to Statistics Canada data compiled by the Chemical Industry Association of Canada. Built with more than 25 million hours of labour, the $4.3 billion Heartland project is the first in North America to combine processes at a single site to transform propane into polypropylene. That integration is expected to help the facility operate with 65 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions than the global average, according to a study conducted by IHS Markit.
“We take propane and turn it into propylene then turn it into polypropylene all in one spot,” Curley says. This means less requirement to transport mate- rials between locations, and enables efficiencies like heat integration between plants, he says. The facility also capitalizes on the first step of the process – propane dehydrogenation (PDH) – itself. “PDH by its very nature taking hydrogen out of propane. We take that hydrogen, and we actually use it in our furnaces and burn it,” Curley says. “Using hydrogen as a fuel makes us more effi - cient in terms of our manufacturing process from an emissions perspective.”
““Using hydrogen as a fuel makes us more efficient in terms of our manufacturing process from an emissions perspective.” ”
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VOL 23 ISSUE 2 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 23 ISSUE 2
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