Articles
Vaperma Inc. Opens Centre to Test New Clean Energy Technology
June 29th, 2007CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) - Weekly Report
Week ending June 29, 2007
On June 21, 2007 Vaperma Inc. officially opened its new 22,000 square-foot research and technology centre for the development and pilot testing of clean energy gas separation membranes. Vaperma’s innovative hollow fibre membrane is a proprietary, made-in-Canada technology that represents a new “dewatering” process for the production of fuel ethanol. The research and development of this technology had been supported by NRCan for many years with the most recent successful demonstration being supported through a contribution agreement funded by TEAM and CETC-O at a value of $1.93M. The total value of Phase 1 of this project is $4.96M with SDTC contributing $1.56M.
Jacques Gourde, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources spoke at the event and participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony. At the event GreenField Ethanol, Canada’s largest ethanol producer, announced it has completed a successful trial demonstration of the new technology that will dramatically improve the ethanol production process. This 50 kg/h trial demonstration, which was part of the R&D package supported by TEAM and CETC-Ottawa provided data which will be used under the guidance of TEAM to determine the GHG reductions that Vaperma’s hollow fibre membrane technology brings to the transportation ethanol production process.
Further development of this dewatering technology will include scaling up to a capacity of 1000kg/h and will be tested at GreenField Ethanol’s Chatham plant with the support of SDTC. The technology also has strong potential for the dehydration of natural gas where EnCana Corporation has shown strong interest and support.
In addition to Jacques Gourde, NRCan was represented by: Wayne Richardson (TEAM), Sarah Radovan (TEAM), Charles Coulombe (NRCan/DMO/Communications Branch), Marc Toupin (NRCan/MINO/MOES), and Terry Giddings (CETC-O).
